Week in review: Animation in resident training, triglycerides and glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy prevalence

A weekly roundup of ophthalmic news from around the web.

Animation and patient narratives help ophthalmology education stick. To ascertain whether whiteboard animation and patient narratives are effective tools for ophthalmology training, medical students at 2 Australian universities were shown a whiteboard animation video on giant cell arteritis (GCA) and then narratives from patients with GCA. Of the 121 students who responded to the follow-up survey, 86% found the animation to be engaging, 83% felt that it helped them to understand the material, and 84% would recommend it to other students for clinical ophthalmology training. Similar positive experiences were reported for patient narratives as a training tool. Advances in Medical Education and Practice

Watch those high triglyceride levels—they could lead to incident glaucoma. Metabolic data taken from participants in 3 US-based health professional cohort studies (N = 599) indicate an adverse association between higher levels of diglycerides and triglycerides and risk of incident primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Conversely, amino acids, cholesteryl esters, and carnitines were not associated with POAG risk. These findings were confirmed by similar metabolic analyses of data from UK Biobank study participants. The authors conclude that “Our data implicate dysregulation in lipid metabolism and mitochondrial function in glaucoma etiology and suggest new targets for glaucoma prevention or therapies.” Nature Communications

Diabetic retinopathy prevalence in the US remains high, say researchers who used several database and survey sources to develop a Bayesian composite estimate of the 2021 prevalence of both general diabetic retinopathy (DR) and vision-threatening DR (VTDR). Using this composite, it was estimated that in 2021, 26.4% of patients with diabetes had DR and 5.1% had VTDR, corresponding to 9.6 million and 1.8 million people in the US, respectively. Prevalence rates of both DR and VTDR were higher in Hispanic and Black populations than in White populations. While DR increased with older age, VTDR rates began to decrease after age 69 years. JAMA Ophthalmology