On March 10, 2020, ELZA’s medical director, Prof. Farhad Hafezi and ELZA’s lead optometrist, Mr. Léonard Kollros, led an ELZA Educational Course (EEC) at the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) in Olten, Solothurn. The audience of final-year optometry students learned from the ELZA team members all about the diagnostics and treatment of irregular corneas.
ELZA participates in the educational activities of the Light for Sight Foundation (www.lightforsight.org) and the EECs are jointly run with the foundation to ensure that eye care professionals have the most advanced knowledge on how to screen and treat corneal ectatic diseases like keratoconus, keratoglobus, post-LASIK ectasia, and Terrien’s Marginal Degeneration. With diseases like these, the earlier they are detected, the earlier they can be treated, and the better the ultimate visual outcomes will be, and Prof. Hafezi presented the underlying biological and medical aspects of the disease, and Mr. Kollros lectured on how these diseases can be detected, using instruments that assess the shape of the cornea (the Pentacam, Keratograph and MS-39 OCT) and its biomechanical strength (the CorVis) – and how some (the Pentacam and CorVis) can be used together to gain a true understanding of how strong and irregularly shaped a patient’s cornea can be.
One of the central components of EECs are case presentations, and Mr. Kollros presented multiple cases, which spanned from the initial diagnosis to how he corrected these patients’ vision through bespoke scleral contact lens fitting, or how Prof. Hafezi used therapeutic Trans-PRK laser therapy (in combination with scleral lenses) to improve the quality of these patients’ vision.
Both men would like to thank the FHNW students for their attention and insightful questions and to state that the ELZA Institute is available for observerships, where the entire care spectrum, from initial diagnosis through to surgery, in our practice.