ARVO 2025: Walk through a novel triaging framework for emergent retinal pathologies

The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) is hosting its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah this year. At the ARVO meeting, researchers' posters and podium presentations cover a wide range of ocular pathologies, diagnostic technologies, and practice modalities. John Tan, a third-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, shared details from the creation of a novel triaging framework. The investigators assessed existing emergency department triage methods and worked to develop a new approach for diagnosing retinal artery occlusions quickly and accurately.

"As we all know, time is retina," Tan said. "The time it takes to diagnose a retinal artery occlusion, and to treat a retinal artery occlusion, is directly correlated with the prognosis of the patient. The longer we wait, the worse the prognosis in terms of visual outcomes."

"We looked at [over 100] patients in our emergency department that had a stroke code initiated for possible retinal artery occlusions," he continued. "We stratified them and looked at the symptoms they had to see if there's any correlations between retinal artery occlusion patients and non-retinal artery occlusion patients."

The patient-reported experiences included sudden and painless vision loss, a sudden increase of floaters, flashes of light, and non-red changes in color vision. Tan and colleagues were able to determine that, among patients with retinal artery occlusion, sudden and painless vision loss with no other symptoms was the most commonly reported patient experience. Among patients who experienced sudden, painless vision loss and did have other symptoms, there were two important findings. "If they had color changes that were non-red, they were more likely to be a retinal artery occlusion," Tan said. "If they had red color changes, or other symptoms that weren't color changes, they're more likely to be a non-retinal artery occlusion."