Continued Engagement, Cataract Session Moved to Sunday | AAO 2025

The American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting that is getting underway today will continue to provide opportunities for interaction, says Bennie H. Jeng, M.D., who as secretary of the meeting had a leading role in planning the meeting, which is being held in Orlando, Florida.

“I think over the years, we have continued to try to make this more and more interactive,” said Jeng, who is chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Scheie Eye Institute there. ”You mentioned the debates. We tried to have some pro-con sessions and debates, and we have Q and A sessions specifically so that the audience can ask questions about different topics. So I think that those are some of the ways that we're trying to maintain engagement.”

Jeng said one major scheduling change this year was moving the session on cataracts from its traditional Monday time slot to Sunday.

“We’ve seen that some people aren't able to stay the entire time, given the financial pressure,” said Jeng. “We thought we would slot it on Sunday afternoon, this time leading up to our social event at Universal Studios, in the hopes that people will stay for that. So we'll see how that one goes. But it's always a great session.” The meeting has reserved parts of the Universal Island of Adventure theme park for its primary social event Sunday night from 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.

The AAO meeting started today with sessions organized around subspecialties and eye diseases, such as glaucoma, ocular oncology and conditions that affect the retina. It ends early Monday afternoon with two sessions on looking at possible side effects from popular glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) that might affect the eyes. One of those sessions is about ischemic optic neuropathy and the other is about nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy.