In this year’s keynote speech, Craig Norman and Patrick Caroline took a walk down memory lane to examine the last 2 and a half decades of both the Global Specialty Lens Symposium and specialty contact lenses. Here they discuss some of the highlights:

Transcript (edited for clarity)

Craig Norman: Hi, everyone. I’m Craig Norman, and I welcome the opportunity to describe to you the session that my colleague, Pat Caroline, and I presented the other day at the Global Specialty Lens Symposium.

The topic that we were tasked with was to discuss the evolution of GSLS and modern specialty lenses. And with this, Pat and I have been spending the last couple of months trying to tie in together the history of the meeting itself, along with some of the important things that happened at those particular meetings, and what happened with those speakers as they evolved within their careers as well, following their first time that they were at the GSLS conference.

Pat, do you have anything to add to that as we get started?

Patrick Caroline: No, it’s just an exciting time. We’ve got a lot to share with everyone, and I’m looking forward to it.

Craig Norman: So, many of the things that have happened regarding the meeting is how it evolved over the years. The conference began as the Global Orthokeratology Symposium. It morphed into the Global Keratoconic Congress, and ultimately morphed into the GSLS in 2009.

The history is really quite interesting as we look at what has happened in orthokeratology first, looking at what happened with orthokeratology turning into myopia control as an interest.

Then the introduction of scleral lenses—or should I say reintroduction of scleral lenses—and how that has really changed significantly.

Pat, of all those things that you and I discussed yesterday, were there a couple of highlights you think that people would want to understand?

Patrick Caroline: Yeah, I think the thing that strikes me about GSLS is how the meeting was constantly recreating itself.

We would start off with a simple concept, like orthokeratology, back in 2002. And there’d really been very few, if any, meetings on the topic of orthokeratology, but it was looking like ortho-k may have some fundamental principles that might lead it to the field of myopia control. And sure enough, in the 3 years following that 2002 meeting, we saw the introduction of Pauline Cho’s fundamental work on orthokeratology and myopia control. It was the first prospective study that was ever published to virtually show, with axial length measurements, that ortho-k had a significant impact on axial eye growth. And it was really in 2005, then, that we saw this incredible explosion of interest in ortho-k and eventually other devices for myopia control. Then, over the next 10 years, we saw this whole thing blossom—from atropine, to time outdoors, to spectacle lenses, to soft multifocal lenses for myopia control.

And it was really at GSLS that this got its start. It’s always been so funny now that we’re doing this retrospective look at this to see how the meeting has adjusted to this new body of research coming out.

You could say the same thing for scleral lenses. That all came into existence at about 2011. And some of the first fundamental work done in the field of modern scleral lenses was done literally at GSLS. We saw the preliminary work of folks like Eef van der Worp describing modern equipment to describe the shape of the sclera. We saw the evolution of these scleral lens designs—the toric haptics, the multifocal components, the asymmetric lens design, quadrant-specific. All of that was really introduced for the first time at GSLS.

We know other meetings were obviously involved, such as the American Academy of Optometry and so on, but none of them had a real specific focus on contact lenses. So their topics were more general and really not specific like we had the wonderful luxury at GSLS to be able to really hone in on these areas.

So, I think, Craig, the birth of myopia control, the birth of modern scleral lenses, and then after the birth was the management of all of these unique complications. We had to figure out what to do with midday fogging. We had to figure out whether conjunctival prolapse was a benign condition or was it something that we needed to deal with immediately. We had to figure out this whole corneal edema thing and, more recently, intraocular pressure increases that take place with scleral lenses.

One by one, we were able to tackle those complications, and it kinda got us to where we are today in the fact that scleral lenses have changed the trajectory of pretty much everything we do with the pathologic cornea.

So, personally, I’m more grateful than probably anyone on the planet for the existence of GSLS. It formed the entire background of everything we’ve ever done with our research and gave us an incredible format to present these data.

Craig Norman: I was just going to mention that those who attended the meeting and were able to see us live would have heard us discuss how all of this started as a dream—like on the back of a napkin. You and I thought that because we had lectured across the world that we knew something about actually putting on an international meeting, which was nuts. Yet from the very beginning, the initial conference—the Global Orthokeratology Symposium—drew over 300 people from 30 countries. And, that continued to evolve to where we are to this day where there are many more than 30 countries actively involved from year to year. There are 60 to 70 exhibitors that are involved every year. And, it’s this place where, if you’re in the specialty lens field that you go to when you’re just getting started and young in the field. You can connect with peers and be able to follow the course of so many of these interesting things that have happened since the year 2000.

Patrick Caroline: Yeah, I think this dream we had 24 years ago of starting this kind of a global perspective on contact lenses—obviously, the test of time has shown it was the right direction to go.

One of the other components that has put GSLS on a different forum is the idea of this very strong poster session. We’re averaging about 130 posters a year since we began the meeting, which means we’ve had over 2,800 posters that have been presented at GSLS. That is an alarming number of data coming in. To have all of that, as well as the general sessions going on, has been pretty darn impressive.

Craig Norman: Yeah, absolutely.

So, for those of you that are watching this, hopefully you’re here at the meeting itself and will be able to watch some more of the phenomenal presentations that are being given for the rest of this meeting. And for those who are at home and looking at this little discussion between Pat Caroline and myself that we will be able to see you at a future meeting of the Global Specialty Lens Symposium.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Patrick Caroline: Thank you, everyone.