Advances in eye disease early diagnosis and treatment. New tests lead to rapid progress. Optical coherence tomography [OCT], Detection of Apoptosing Retinal Cells [DARC], anti-VEGF therapies. Better understanding of neurodegeneration processes in the brain and eyes. Leading eye disease and neurodegeneration expert, Prof. Francesca Cordeiro.

Ophthalmology is a very fast moving field of medicine. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Many new research breakthroughs happen in the area of neurodegenerative problems that are connected to ophthalmology. A lot of research is going on, new treatments are coming along. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. From your perspective, what does the future hold for ophthalmology? Dr. Francesca Cordeiro, MD. I think ophthalmology is a very rosy area. Certainly there's so much potential as our ability to visualize things improves. One of the big achievements that has improved us diagnostically is optical coherence tomography [OCT]. That change in the technology just over five years has been huge. You can see things now with an optical coherence tomography OCT that you weren't able to do before. There are eye treatment improvements, such as adaptive optics. This allows you to even look at very high resolution into the eye at a cellular level. This is extremely useful if you're looking at new treatments for genetic retinal dystrophies. Dr. Francesca Cordeiro, MD. Other breakthroughs that are coming through are in medication development. Our team have developed an eye drop version of the Anti-VEGF treatments. There are methods to be less dependent on relying on your patient to do eye drops everyday. There are some sustained release methods of putting pellets into the eye. They release the medication over time. There are methods where you have ribbon type of thing around the eye. This is a method to slow release the medication. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. There are so many eye therapy achievements that are coming through. New treatments that have been discovered in other areas. They have applications in ophthalmology. Dr. Francesca Cordeiro, MD. So, it's a very exciting time to be in ophthalmology. If you look at the field of ophthalmology, what we know now, even compared to 10 years ago, it's huge in terms of our knowledge advancement. Professor Cordeiro, thank you very much for this very interesting conversation! Dr. Anton Titov, MD. We are looking forward to see the results of your research! Dr. Francesca Cordeiro, MD. Thank you very much!