Ocular surface disease (OSD)—including dry eye disease, blepharitis, meibomian gland dysfunction, conjunctival inflammation, and cicatrizing ocular surface disorders—is one of the most common and underrecognized factors affecting the success of eye surgery (e.g., refractive, cataract, glaucoma, strabismus, retina, and oculoplastic). Conversely, optimizing the ocular surface is one of the most effective, modifiable strategies for enhancing surgical success across all ophthalmic subspecialties. And the central clinical principle appears to be universal: elective eye surgery would be better performed on a stable ocular surface.
To minimize this surgical risk and help optimize surgical outcomes, TFOS has launched a new initiative, which will be to create “Guidelines for preparing the ocular surface for eye surgery.” These guidelines will be created by an international panel of experts, including ocular surface specialists - Dimitri Azar (USA), Stefano Barabino (Italy), Christophe Baudouin (France), Claus Cursiefen (Germany), Anat Galor (USA), José AP Gomes (Brazil), Geetha Iyer (India), Sihem Lazreg (Algeria), Wei Li (China), Ernesto Otero (Colombia), Victor Perez (USA), Mohamed Shafik Shaheen (Egypt), Ikuko Toda (Japan) and Stephanie Watson (Australia); glaucoma specialists - Gus Gazzard (UK) and Miriam Kolko (Denmark); oculoplastic specialist - Rachna Murthy (UK); Retina specialists - Corinne Dot (France) and Goran Petrovski (Norway); and strabismus specialist - Nathalie Azar (USA).
The TFOS guidelines will be produced this Summer, published in a leading eye journal, and distributed throughout the world.
