RWC 2024: Surgical retina tools used in practice

David Almeida, MD, PhD, MBA, shared insights on the surgical tools he personally uses in his practice at the 2024 Retina World Congress meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Almeida, MD, PhD, MBA:

Hi, my name is David Almeida. I'm a vitreoretinal surgeon and president of Erie Retina Research in the Centers for Advanced Surgical Exploration.
Having now sites all over the world, global sites, having something like the Norlase product is even more of a game changer because you can basically have the indirect with you and the laser unit available at all times. The battery is enough to last you the full day, and then you just get consistent delivery of laser spots when you need it, how you need it, with really no downtime. So it's been really important and really critical to support those kinds of processes at our sites.

I think there's gonna be 3 ones that are going to be relevant. One is going to be the how easy it is. It's almost like an app on your phone. You know, it has the tablets. So it's very easy that has voice; you can interact with your voice. The second one is the portability. As a resident fellow, even as a staff, you go to so many different places. You cover so many areas, to have like a dependable laser, but that's what you want to be doing. And the third one is gonna be the runtime. Not being fiber optic, being the actual being LED doesn't break doesn't go down, and you don't have to replace a very expensive component of it.