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On February the 4th this year Brisbane hosted the 34th annual ANZ Cornea Society conference. This meeting brings together

Australia and New Zealand’s leading corneal transplant specialists along with eye bankers, optometrists and vision scientists with expertise in management of disorders of the cornea. The meeting was held at Queensland’s iconic GOMA art gallery.

The conference was organised by Terrace Eye Centre’s Dr Peter Beckingsale, assisted by our new corneal specialist Dr Sing-Pey Chow who has recently returned from subspecialty training in England.

The conference highlights included the annual Coster lecture, presented by Prof Shigeru Kinoshita from Kyoto, Japan. The lecture was titled “Future treatments for corneal endothelial dysfunction” and covered Prof Kinoshita’s world pioneering research into using stem cell technologies to enable cellular rather than tissue corneal transplants. There are likely to be a number of years until this breakthrough treatment is widely available, but it points to an exciting future for patients suffering from corneal disease, especially Fuchs’ dystrophy and bullous keratopathy.

Dr Peter Beckingsale presented his research on “Biometry in keratoconus”. Calculating implant lens powers for patents with keratoconus and cataract is notoriously difficult, but by utilising the latest corneal power measurements from the Oculus Pentacam and the most advanced lens calculation formulas Dr Beckingsale has been able to reduce the absolute mean power error to less than 1 diopter, even in advanced cases of keratoconus.

Dr Sing-Pey Chow presented some of her research from the UK on “Management of high risk corneal transplants” and Dr Sunil Warrier, one of Terrace Eye Centre’s ocular oncology specialists, presented an “Update on management of ocular surface tumours”.

The meeting was a great success, with nearly 100 attendees from around Australia, New Zealand and the world. It was a great opportunity to learn from each other, and to keep up to date with the latest developments in their sub-specialty. Next year’s meeting will be held on March 2-3 in Sydney, see www.anz-cornea-society.org for more details.