Highlights from ARVO 2026

In this episode of Meeting Mic, we bring you pearls and perspectives from the Association of Vision and Research in Ophthalmology 2026. Jason Greenfield, MD, MBA, Alon Harris, MS, PhD, FARVO, and Yash Lahoti spoke with Healio about their study, which was designed to look at some of the unknown risk factors for glaucoma. 00:37 Next, Michael Zhu, a medical student at Duke University School of Medicine, told Healio about his presentation about retina imaging and how it may reveal links to Parkinson's disease. 06:12 And, Iris Fang-Yu Hu, MD, discusses her presentation on how using visual prompts helped improve glaucoma detection by a large language model. 08:35 Top headlines from the meetings. 09:31 Read the full coverage here: Glaucoma, hypertension may be linked to dementia risk Source: Greenfield J, et al. Artificial intelligence ready and exploratory atlas for diabetes insights: The association between glaucoma, hypertension, and cognitive performance. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver. Imaging reveals link between inner nuclear layer thickness, Parkinson's disease Source: Zhu M, et al. Macular retinal layer thickness in early Parkinson's disease. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver. Reference images help AI model detect glaucoma Source: Hu I, et al. Providing reference images to LLMs improves glaucoma detection from fundus photos. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver. Smoking may be modifiable risk factor for myopia-related vision loss Source: Flitcroft I, et al. Smoke gets in your eyes: Evidence that smoking is the first modifiable risk factor for myopia-related vision impairment. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver. Thyroid eye disease shows long-term progression in real-world dataset Source: Ramesh S, et al. Disease progression in thyroid eye disease: Findings from a large real-world study in the United States. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver.