To Our Colleagues,

This year sees the publication of the eleventh edition of The Handbook of Ocular Disease Management. The years that we have been compiling this compendium have been professionally very rewarding to us. We are forever grateful to the management and editorial staff at Review of Optometry. We especially thank Amy Hellem for her work and contribution.We also thank Alcon for its continued support.

When we first envisioned this supplement, we wanted to provide a quick reference on the most commonly encountered ocular diseases and offer readers our perspectives and experience in dealing with these conditions. However, as the compendium evolved, we quickly saw the need to rely more heavily on evidence- based medicine. Simply put, evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best research in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence- based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. Good doctors combine individual clinical expertise with the best available external evidence.Without clinical expertise, practices risk becoming tyrannized by evidence, for even excellent external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate for an individual patient.Without current best evidence, a practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the detriment of patients.We have gone back to the beginning.We want to ensure that every condition that we write about (or have written about) not only reflects our personal experience and perspective, but that our perspectives are backed through scrupulous research and reflect evidence based medicine.

Last year, we dedicated the Tenth Edition to our professors and mentors who helped shape our professional development. This year, we dedicate the Eleventh Edition of the Handbook of Ocular Disease Management to our students and residents. With their interactions and questions, they challenge us to remain current and practical and to stay on top of our game. To them we dedicate the eleventh edition of the Handbook of Ocular Disease Management.

Joe
Andy
Al