New Year, New Focus

For many people, the start of a new year goes something like this: Choose something that has plagued you for years and vow to reverse it—also known as the “New Year’s Resolution.” This year, I challenge you to try something different: Choose one word as your mantra or motto, and lose the long list of changes you want to make. Picking a single focus helps you center yourself and creates a clearer vision for the future.

I recently heard an unsettling comment—that 2022 will be more like “2020 too.” However, if we want to look at the year ahead that way, we can at least feel confident knowing we have better tools to survive practicing our profession during a global pandemic than we did in 2020 version 1. We have endured, persevered, and proven optometry to be essential. There have been challenges, with staffing shortages in our clinics and the negative effect of delayed care for our patients, but we have also found that we thrive on personal interactions with our patients, staff, and peers. In-person meetings and travel have once again allowed networking and collaboration with our colleagues and industry partners to enhance our practices and patient care, and we should continue to see more live options in the coming year—including the inaugural MOD Live meeting this May in Nashville (modlivemeeting.com)!

The cover focus of this first issue of 2022 is on presbyopia, and there is no doubt in my mind that this year will be an extra exciting one in which to practice optometry, now that we have a prescription therapy for this condition in our treatment arsenal. Hopefully this new drop, combined with a desire to be spectacle-free, will bring in the millions of presbyopic Americans who are currently not getting routine eye care, but instead are shopping the drug store aisles for OTC readers. These potential patients, between the ages of 40 and 55 years, are at risk for many often-asymptomatic eye diseases, such as glaucoma, which we will have greater opportunity to catch at an early stage.

This issue is chock full of perspectives on and experience in the presbyopia space, so be sure to take a look. Selina R. McGee, OD, FAAO, Dipl ABO, walks us through the future of presbyopia management in her article, “The Latest Roundup of Key Presbyopia–Correcting Drops,” and Rachael A. Wruble, OD, FAAO, weighs in on how these drops will affect optometry in her article, “How Will Presbyopia–Correcting Drops Fit Into the Treatment Toolbox?” Need some insights on fitting multifocal contact lenses? Jason E. Compton, OD, FAAO, has you covered! Check out his article, “Get Prepped for Multifocal Success.” Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO; Joshua Davidson, OD, FSLS, FAAO; and Michael Greenwood, MD, collaborate in a point/counterpoint examining the utility of presbyopia–correcting treatment options, and lastly, learn about optimal pupil size in the context of small-aperture IOLs and pupil-modulating drops for the treatment of presbyopia from Jay S. Pepose, MD, PhD, and Renfeng “Rena” Xu, MD, PhD, with a sidebar by Charles Roseman, OD, FAAO.

My word for 2021 was inspire. I worked hard to inspire those around me to achieve their personal best and to overcome life’s challenges along the way. My word for 2022 is empower. For me, this means striving to learn and grow and to have a newfound confidence for leading my staff into the new year, as we continue to embrace medical optometry. Have you thought of your word yet?

– Leslie O’Dell, OD, FAAO