Page 6 - Demo

RESEARCH PROFILE
Cornea and Refractive Research
DR DAVIN JOHNSON
After a busy clinical start to my academic career, I am pleased to share some exciting research initiatives with the department.
First o , I congratulate two medical students (Daisy Liu and Liam O’Sullivan) on their very successful critical inquiry projects with me from the summer 2018. Daisy Liu completed a comprehensive meta-analysis with me on diagnostic features di erentiating viral from bacterial conjunctivitis, which has been preliminarily accepted to the Journal of the American Medical Association as part of their Rational Clinical Examination series. Liam O’Sullivan conducted a comparative study of standard 30-minute corneal collagen cross-linking (CXL) vs. accelerated CXL, with his work accepted as a poster presentation both to the ARVO and COS meetings with plans to submit to a journal for publication.
For the 2018–2019 academic year, Dr Ankur Ralhan worked with me for his resident research project. Along with medical students Hassan Hazari and Caberry Yu, we developed a method for measuring and quantifying eye rubbing using a highly sensitive pressure sensor embedded on the surface of the eyelid. This seemingly simple concept has enormous potential for further research, especially as many theorize that corneal ectatic diseases
such as keratoconus are caused by eye rubbing and/or nocturnal eye pressure. Without a quanti cation of eye rubbing, this has never before been proven. Dr Ralhan will be presenting some preliminary work on Research Day 2019, and we hope to continue this research next year.
Finally, Dr Laura Wells from the Department of Engineering has been developing new materials for intraocular lenses that would further minimize the risk of posterior capsular opaci cation. As a co-investigator, we have jointly applied for granting through CIHR to hopefully fund some early clinical studies in regards to this novel IOL material.
Over the next year, in addition to research on eye rubbing, I hope to set up more research in our ophthalmology simulation lab. Speci cally, it is my hope to develop and validate a “Surgical OSCE” speci c to Ophthalmology residents such that ocular surgical skills can be assessed in a standardized fashion. This has already occurred in other disciplines, but never for Ophthalmology. I invite any residents interested in this research to please contact me!
Above left: Obtaining a corroborative pressure reading while the subject applies pressure to his eye. Insert: Placement of the eye- lid intraocular pressure sensor.
Above: Dr Davin Johnson demonstrating a procedure in the Queen’s Ophthalmology Simulation Lab.
6 | Research Report 2018/2019