Surgical video panels from Retina Fellows Forum

David Hutton of Ophthalmology Times talks with Sunir Garg, MD about his surgical video panel at this year's Retina Fellows Forum.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

David Hutton:

I'm David Hutton of Ophthalmology Times. The Retina Fellows Forum is being held this year in Chicago, and Dr Sunir Garg is one of the moderators. Dr Garg, thank you for joining us. Tell us about your surgical video panel.

Sunir J. Garg, MD:

Thanks, and I really appreciate it. The Fellows Forum has meant a lot to me since I attended it more than 20 years ago when I was a fellow, and 1 of the great things about this meeting is, we have the opportunity to sort of pick the brains of some of the best surgeons in America. And my job is to simply bring up cases, both common cases that we see frequently, as well as some really rare cases that have important teaching points, and to open up to discussion from the fellows, as well as from our faculty. And I learned a lot listening to the dialogue. There's a bunch of cases that we'll talk about.

So 1 of them is simply how do you induce a posterior vitreous detachment? This is a common thing that vitreoretinal surgeons do all the time, and typically, it's pretty easy for us to do that. But once in a while, you encounter a case where it's really hard to peel the highlight off of the surface of the retina. So we talk about different tips and techniques that people use for that. Other things that we do a lot include peeling the epiretinal membrane or peeling the internal limiting membrane. And while, for most cases, those are also pretty straightforward, when they're not, it can be really complicated, time consuming, and sometimes frustrating to make it happen successfully. And by bringing together different ideas and different strategies that people have used with success, we're hopeful that we'll be able to allow the attendees to leave with that knowledge and be able to implement it into the office as well.

And then we have some doozies. You know, we have a great case of proliferative sickle cell retinopathy, that cause transretinal detachment. And those are not things that most people will see all the time, but when you do see it, it'll be helpful to be able to bring some different techniques out. And then of course, the bane of every retinal surgeon existence, which is proliferative vitreoretinopathy. We'll talk a little bit about different techniques that people have for doing an efficient peel repairing the retina and helping the retina stay in position for the long term. So it's really covers the gamut, but a lot of useful pearls.