25/07/2025
The Australian and New Zealand Corneal Society’s annual conference was held from the 6th to the 7th of March while the Eye Bank Association of Australia and New Zealand was held on the 4th and 5th. As the current chair of ANZCS and acting medical director of the Queensland Eye Bank Dr Peter Beckingsale was closely involved as both an organiser and presenter for these meetings. The venue was Brisbane’s South Bank, and while the EBAANZ meeting was completed successfully, the ill-timed arrival of Cyclone Alfred forced the ANZCS conference to be held online instead of in person. Despite the last minute change of plans the meeting was hugely successful with over 100 attendees logging in to the meeting and Dr Sheraz Daya, current president of the American-European Congress of Ophthalmic Surgeons braving the weather and flying in to Brisbane to deliver the Coster lecture on the evolution of lamellar corneal surgery.
Other hot topics covered included the statistical genetics of keratoconus, glaucoma and Fuchs’ dystrophy, CAIRS surgery (Corneal Allogeneic Intrastromal Ring Segments) for keratoconus, corneal bioengineering and an update on the management of ocular surface cancers by Terrace Eye Centre’s Dr Lindsay McGrath. Dr Peter Beckingsale presented on the differences in the rate of corneal transplantation between states and a case of complex anterior segment reconstruction using a “Baseball pupiloplasty” for a patient with a fixed dilated pupil and severe light sensitivity.
Next year’s meeting will be held in Sydney, and we are looking forward to joining our corneal colleagues in person (and with better weather) then.
Dr Peter Beckingsale
