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Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) drugs - ranibizumab, aflibercept, and off-label bevacizumab - are vital to the treatment of common retinal diseases, including exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic macular edema (DME), and macular edema (ME) associated with retinal vein occlusion (RVO). Given the high prevalence of AMD and retinal vascular diseases, anti-VEGF agents represent a large cost burden to the United States (US) healthcare system. Although ranibizumab and aflibercept are 30-fold more expensive per injection than bevacizumab, the two more costly medications are commonly used in the US, even though all three have been shown to be effective and safe for treatment of these retinal diseases. We investigated the availability and content of professional ophthalmic guidelines on cost consideration in the selection of anti-VEGF agents. We found that current professional guidelines were limited in availability and lacked specific guidance on cost-based anti-VEGF drug selection. This represents a missed opportunity to encourage the practice of value-based medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of virtual reality (VR) simulators for many graduate medical education (GME) programs. It states that the GME programs had accessed to virtual eye surgery training with the systematic analysis of simulation training outcomes. It also notes that the simulation-based course requires construct validation by comparing surgical performance on the simulator between novices and ophthalmologists.

Virtual reality (VR) surgery simulation is an emerging teaching tool to train residents in cataract surgery. The widespread adoption of virtual surgery has been limited, however, by high costs and the absence of standardized curricula and evidence demonstrating the impact of VR training on resident surgical outcomes. We outline a resident virtual cataract surgery course-freely accessible online-that we hope will contribute to the development of a standardized VR cataract surgery curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]