Part 6: What if? Curing any eye disease with the snap of your finger

In celebration of Ophthalmology Times' 50th anniversary, we asked leading experts in the field, in a perfect world, if they had the ability to cure one eye disease or condition in the snap of their finger, what they would choose and why.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ella H Leung, MD:

I, interestingly enough, think for a retina specialist, I'm actually going to say if we can cure glaucoma, because glaucoma is one of the diseases that continues to progress no matter what we do right now. We don't have a great treatment for it. At least for the retina, even if you have retinal detachment, there are a lot of things we can do to try to reverse some of that damage and try to preserve or improve sight, if we can. I think with gene therapies and everything else, the field of retina is really exciting, even for inherited retinal diseases, and maybe we'll find a cure. So I'm hopeful that maybe it will work for glaucoma in the future as well.

David S Liao, MD, PhD:

Given our current discussion, I think it would be inherited retinal disease. We really have no options. We have great options for things like AMD, for diabetes, this is just something we haven't made headwinds in, and I think we're starting to see progress.

Sally S Ong, MD:

If I could cure an eye condition today, I think that is such a good question, because we have so many vision-threatening conditions that really impair a patient's ability to see, to read, to do the things that they like to do, to work, and to care for their families. But I think if I had to choose one thing, I think it would probably be diabetic retinopathy, just, you know, get it done and be done with it, because we have increasing numbers of people who have diabetes. As a consequence of having diabetes, you can get complications such as diabetic retinopathy, and we know that diabetic retinopathy is the number one cause of vision loss in the working-age population. So at an age when you're supposed to be productive, you know, at your work, at your home, you're really impaired by complications of diabetic retinopathy. So if we can find a way to cure this disease and help the patients regain their vision so they can regain their quality of life and their livelihoods, I think it will really make a huge impact, not just on individualsbut really on society.