Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to Eye on Ocular Health on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Prethy Rao, an adult and pediatric retina specialist at Retina and Vitreous of Texas in Houston. She’ll be sharing insights on key topics featured at the 2026 Vit-Buckle Society Annual Meeting. Here’s Dr. Rao now.
Dr. Rao:
I'm really excited about Vit-Buckle Society this year. This is one of my favorite meetings, mainly because I get to see our colleagues in the field in different levels of career, and all of us come together and just have a good time. It's such a relaxing meeting where we can talk to each other about what we're doing in practice, what we're doing in the future, and just have an exchange of ideas. It's a beautiful meeting.
What I love the most about the meeting and what I'm looking forward to are the surgery topics. Honestly, 60 to 70 percent of the meeting is surgical-based, which I love because while we have some great meetings in retina, a lot of them are geared more towards medical treatment and medical retina, which is how our field is going. But we can't forget that we start with surgery. So I'm really excited to hear everyone's tips and tricks for different surgical techniques.
I'm excited about the debates, which are always fun because you never know—it can get pretty heated, but that's what I love about this meeting. Everyone gives their opinion, and it's a raw opinion. You either love something or hate something, and at the end of the day, these debates are never black and white. There's never one cut-and-dried answer. To be able to see people argue one way or the other when the real answer is probably somewhere in the middle is nice. One thing I'm excited to see people's opinions on is photobiomodulation. I think it's a hot topic right now, and so there's a camp that really loves it, a camp that's on the fence, and another camp that is very against it. So I'm interested to hear about that debate specifically.
As an adult and pediatric retina specialist, I'm really excited to see that there's several pediatric topics on the agenda. One specifically is the debate on laser versus anti-VEGF for ROP. Another is doing pediatric retina surgery—should all of us do it? Should some of us do it? In what setting should we do it? So I'm excited to see that.
As we all know, kids become adults, and kid diseases eventually become adult diseases. One thing that we're going to address at the meeting this year is managing a common pediatric condition, retinopathy of prematurity, in the adult space. As these kids get older, we're going to look at a lot of these kids coming in with retinal detachments from retinopathy of prematurity. The field has changed because now, not only are we treating ROP with laser, but we're treating it with anti-VEGF therapy. There's advantages and disadvantages with that, and with that comes potential retinal detachments. So how do we manage, as adult retinal specialists, these pediatric conditions when they get older? We're going to talk about different tips and techniques for identifying adult ROP detachments, how to manage them, what approach is best first, and how to approach the outcomes. So I'm excited about that.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Prethy Rao discussing her perspective on the 2026 Vit-Buckle Society Annual Meeting. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Eye on Ocular Health on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
