2026 Glaucoma NZ Professional Symposium – The Grey Zones

2026 Glaucoma NZ Professional Symposium - The Grey Zones

Date: 1/08/2026 (NZST)

Venue: Hunua Room, Aotea Centre, 50 Mayoral Drive, Auckland, 1142, NEW ZEALAND

Provider: Glaucoma New Zealand

Contact: Pippa Martin, [E] P.Martin@auckland.ac.nz, [P] +642108688303

Activity Outline

This one-day event offers you a new interactive program of interesting cases & updates in glaucoma management, convened by world-leading ophthalmologist Professor  Dame Helen Danesh-Meyer. The theme “The Grey Zones of Glaucoma: Uncertainty, judgement, and decision-making in everyday practice” sets the tone for the day: pragmatic, empowering, and unapologetically focused on excellence in front-line decision-making. Professor Keith Martin, our keynote speaker, is followed by twenty ophthalmologists and optometrists, presenting a range of topics to equip clinicians with a framework for integrating new risk signals into clinical reasoning without over-medicalising uncertainty or prematurely altering management. This interactive event is punctuated with panel discussions and rapid-fire cases to keep you engaged and challenged. 

Learning Objectives

• Discuss how emerging tools may reshape diagnosis and management across the disease spectrum, from pre-perimetric glaucoma to advanced disease
• Discuss a pragmatic framework for tailoring first-line therapy to biology, behaviour, and health-system realities
• Identify at-risk patients early and deploy realistic, effective countermeasures, move beyond blame toward system-level solutions
• Describe a patient-centred approach to recognising when maximal medical therapy is no longer enough—and when decisive surgical action offers the best chance of preserving vision
• Sharpen judgement in borderline cases and prevent false reassurance or unnecessary escalation in everyday practice
• Discuss how these innovations may recalibrate traditional concepts such as target pressure, progression thresholds, and treatment timing, while highlighting the importance of rigorous validation and thoughtful integration into real-world practice
• Use longitudinal assessment as the cornerstone of management in equivocal cases
• Use strategies for verifying results, repeating testing selectively, and integrating examination findings with imaging and functional measures
• Describe trend-based and event-based analyses explored as complementary tools for improving diagnostic confidence
• Discuss which nocturnal factors deserve attention in contemporary practice, and which remain speculative
• Describe a framework for integrating new risk signals into clinical reasoning without over-medicalising uncertainty or prematurely altering management
• Use practical strategies for navigating anatomical complexity while avoiding both undertreatment and unnecessary intervention
• Discuss the implications for medical therapy, laser trabeculoplasty, and surgical escalation in a phenotype often associated with treatment resistance and accelerated disease course
• Identify when to step outside the glaucoma algorithm and pursue alternative investigations
• Discuss the consequences of treatment burden against the hazards of delayed therapy in an asymptomatic population
• Describe when aggressive pressure lowering is justified and how to monitor response in a phenotype prone to slow but relentless decline
• Debate how aggressively to treat fluctuating disease and how to individualise follow-up in younger, often asymptomatic patients
• Tolerate ambiguity while remaining vigilant for change. Cultivate disciplined judgement rather than reflexive intervention is presented as central to high-quality glaucoma care
• Discuss the professional and ethical responsibilities that accompany technological progress
• Discuss the legitimacy of plural defensible strategies when guided by rigorous clinical judgement
• Maintain clinician oversight and interpretive responsibility of new tools entering routine practice
• Identify when to step outside the glaucoma algorithm and pursue alternative investigations
• Weigh the consequences of treatment burden against the hazards of delayed therapy in an asymptomatic population
• Understand the importance of reassessing targets, verifying progression, and revisiting systemic risk factors when glaucoma refuses to behave predictably
• Define progression and set appropriate target pressures in normal pressure glaucoma
• Discuss implications for medical therapy, laser trabeculoplasty, and surgical escalation in a phenotype often associated with treatment resistance and accelerated disease course

Max CPD hours awarded: 6.5

Session Information