June 4-6, 2015
Hilton Savannah DeSoto Hotel
With 69 attendees and 13 guests, the Savannah symposium continued the tradition of strong attendance! Thank you to the planning committee, Drs. Erica Tolar (Chair), Rachel Allbaugh, Alison Clode and Richard McMullen for their efforts and dedication to planning a very successful meeting.
Invited speakers Dr. Victor Perez and Dr. Nigel Campbell have generously allowed us to post the notes from their presentations. You will need to log in to access these speakers' notes. The digital proceedings of the meeting abstracts are available here as well for current members.
State-of-the-Art Speakers
Dr. Nigel Campbell, BVetMed, PhD, DACVIM(LA), DACVAA, MRCVS
Clinical Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at North Carolina State University
Sedation and General Anesthetic Techniques in Equine Ophthalmology
Biography: Dr. Campbell has worked in equine practice, completed a residency on equine internal medicine and earned his PhD in physiology. He is double-boarded as a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (Large Animal) and the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia.
Dr. Victor Perez, MD
Director, Ocular Surface Center
Professor of Ophthalmology, Microbiology and Immunology
Walter G. Ross Distinguished Chair in Ophthalmic Research
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Bascom Palmer Eye Institute
Inflammatory Disease of the Eye: a window to systemic diseases in humans
Ophthalmic Pearls
The Research Committee, led by Chair Dr. Wendy Townsend, has again graciously provided a list 'ophthalmic pearls' gleaned from the meeting for your reference.
From our state of the art lecturer, Dr. Victor Perez – a therapy that may be useful to equine ophthalmologists in the future is iontophoresis to push drugs into the eye. Can do pulse therapies with less complications as the drug is not continually administered. Currently being used in human medicine with some good success.
Positive titers for leptospira in horses with ERU whether in serum or aqueous humor was associated with a poorer prognosis for vision.
Intravitreal injection of 4mg of gentamicin has shown promise for treatment of chronic recurrent or persistent uveitis.
A missense mutation in Haflinger horses may be responsible for their increased risk of squamous cell carcinoma.
Horses with impaired vision in one eye might perform better if that eye is completely occluded. Consider use of an eye cup hood to determine if the horse performs better with monocular vision than with binocular vision that is significantly impaired in one eye.
EHV-2 and perhaps EHV-5 might be implicated in some outbreaks of keratoconjunctivitis and corneal ulceration. Several horses developed melting ulcers that appeared to be associated with EHV-2. Whether EHV-2 was causative remains to be seen.
EHV-2 was also associated with a severe case of heterochromic iridocyclitis with secondary keratitis. Treatment with topical ganciclovir appeared to diminish the inflammation although the globe still became phthisical.
Retrobulbar blocks and pre-operative treatment with oral fluconazole were associated with longer general anesthesia recovery times.
Up to 70% of horses racing on dirt tracks will have some degree of corneal damage after a race compared to 40% of horses racing on a turf track.
Endothelial stripping and iridectomy for invasive iris melanoma can potentially have very good post-operative results.
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