OANJ News

It’s a wrap! Another successful Virtual Spring Conference has come to a close! More than 120 Opticians attended the full-day event and heard from national industry leaders in amazing sessions.

Sam Winnegrad took a deep dive into Big Picture Anatomy: The Eye as a Contact Lens Platform. He provided an overview of key external and internal ocular anatomy, including lids, cornea, crystalline lens, and retina, in the context of contact lens wear. He described how eyelid, lash, adnexal, and tear film anatomy influence contact lens selection, movement, comfort, and vision.

He also explained the relationship between corneal, limbal, and scleral anatomy and safe, effective soft, GP, and scleral lens fitting. Sam highlighted how anterior and posterior segment structures, including the crystalline lens, vitreous, retina, and optic nerve, affect contact lens prescribing, expectations, and long-term safety. He also provided a practical overview of ocular anatomy, focusing on how each structure relates to contact lens wear.

Winnegrad’s other lecture reviewed basic optics concepts and refractive errors (sphere, cylinder, axis) as they relate to toric contact lens correction. He taught how to transpose spectacle prescriptions into minus cylinder form and determine spherical equivalent when appropriate. He also discussed applying vertex distance compensation to higher-power prescriptions when converting from spectacles to contact lenses.

Cira Collins dominated the afternoon with a presentation on French Opticianry and what we can learn from it. She explored the French optical landscape to extract lessons from our friends across the Atlantic. She taught about the power of opticianry education, how to adjust horn frames, and how to coexist with other opticals right down the street. In another session, she described how animals see and how we know it to be true. She explored what constitutes an eye in the animal kingdom and how understanding that may change how we practice in our profession. Finally, she concluded the conference with a session on eye care for athletes. The participants examined the challenges of enhancing patients’ vision while they play sports and began to explore how a sports vision optician must think differently from an everyday dispensing optician. She covered the needs presented by the condition elements (wind, water, sun, indoor lighting, protection, color), by speed, by visual range, and by differing focal length needs. She explored the range of eyewear options to address those needs and expose participants to the deeper learning they will need to be able to tackle a sports vision subspecialty. Most importantly, the participants now understand the safety needs of athletes and how we hold those standards in the US.