Get ready for CIME 2024: Extended schedule elevates learning and connections

With an expanded program designed to foster learning opportunities and connections with colleagues, the 18th Annual Controversies in Modern Eye Care (CIME) meeting will take place at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City in California on May 4, 2024.

Arjan Hura, MD, Robert Maloney, MD, and Neda Shamie, MD, from the Maloney-Shamie Vision Institute in Los Angeles are the program cochairs of the meeting. Shamie recently spoke with Ophthalmology Times and Optometry Times to highlight what will be new for attendees at the 18th Annual CIME meeting, emphasizing a full-day program with guest speakers, hands-on labs, and discussions on advanced patient care among leaders in ophthalmology and optometry. Shamie shares some of the key takeaways here with Group Editorial Director Sheryl Stevenson.

To learn more about or to register for the 18th Annual CIME meeting, click here.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Sheryl Stevenson: What can attendees expect to learn at this particular program?

Neda Shamie, MD: There's lots to cover! Every year, we think, oh my gosh, there's so much more that we'd love to cover. So this year, for the first time ever in the 18-year history of this meeting, we're actually prolonging the meeting. It used to always be just a morning meeting. It would end at noon, but this year we're extending to 5:30 pm, I believe. It's on a Saturday so it'll be on May 4 on a Saturday. It's always historically been on a Sunday. So the first time we're doing this on a Saturday, partly because that Sunday is Cinco de Mayo and we were a little afraid that people are going to rather party than come to come to a meeting.

What you can expect to learn at this meeting...we're definitely going to cover surgical topics that are pertinent to our optometric network and optometric community. The topic of premium cataract surgery with presbyopia-correcting lenses, advanced lens technology is going to be a big part of this meeting. Glaucoma will be covered with MIGS [minimally invasive glaucoma surgery], the topic around MIGS and how to have that conversation with patients, who are the patients who would be candidates for MIGS.

There will be two mini-symposia within the meeting covering geographic atrophy and macular degeneration. There'll be a lot of discussion around how to monitor patients with macular degeneration, geographic atrophy, who would be a candidate for the new treatment modalities that are available that really have caused a paradigm shift in the way we address these. These are just kind of some of the few samplings.

We have some fantastic guest speakers who are coming from around the country—some top-level optometrists as well as ophthalmologists. This is going [to] be a really dynamic meeting.

There'll be opportunities for wet labs. There's going to be a lot of industry representation. This time will be a lot more interactive than ever before. Some of the companies will be bringing many of their technologies for you to have hands-on experience with the technology.

One of the highlights of our meeting is that there's going to be plenty opportunity to network and reunite with old friends. In doing that and networking, be able to get ideas on how to optimize your practice and really rekindle old friendships and collaborative opportunities whether it's with other optometrists or with us and the faculty.

I'm really excited. This to me, I feel like it's a personal celebration for me to gather all our colleagues together and talk about things that we're passionate about. It feels like a wedding. Except it's a wedding every year for me. A lot of fun, a lot of opportunity to meet and greet and get to know the optometrists and for them to get to know us. So really grateful for this opportunity. I'm very excited, and I hope that it will be a really enriching experience all around.

Stevenson: Sounds like a very empowering meeting and agenda. Playing off the word 'controversies' in the title of the program—is there anything like any debates or any pro/con anything like that that might fit the bill of being controversial?

Shamie: Yeah, I mean, controversial in the most positive sense possible of that word. Controversial meaning...again, like, I think you said it exactly...that there's always both sides of the coin as far as decision making in clinical eye care. We will most definitely present the pros and cons of different technologies.

When we talk about, as an example, advanced lens technology, the presbyopia-correcting lenses, what are some controversial scenarios in which maybe the lenses would or would not be a good choice for patients.

Geographic atrophy—we're going to talk about areas where it's gray zone. Obviously, there are obvious patients or scenarios that the patient would benefit from treatment. There's those who don't, but there's those patients that kind of are in middle of the way so that kind of controversy will be discussed. I think it always leaves our attendees with a lot to think about and hopefully empowers them with the knowledge to forge ahead and offer best treatment to patients.