Volume 1, Issue 1

Eye to AAOS

A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e A s i a n A m e r i c a n O p t o m e t r i c S o c i e t y

Special points of interest:

Meeting the new 2009 Board

Recognizing upcoming events including our FREE CE in April

Highlights from the Installa-tion Banquet in January

Meeting the 3rd and 4th year liaisons

Medical Abstract regarding precedence of Glaucoma in Japanese-Americans

President’s Message 1

Installation Banquet 2

Meet the Board 3-4

Application & Upcom-ing Events

5-6

Medical Abstract 7

Sponsorships 8

Meet the AAOS Stu-dent Liaisons

9-10

Inside this issue:

Greetings everyone! Let me just say that it’s an honor for me to be a part of the AAOS at this ca-pacity. I’ve always en-joyed the friendship and camaraderie that this Society brings and hope to continue to meet new faces and run into famil-iar ones at future AAOS events.

This past January, the AAOS honored the late Dr. Tak Shishino during the annual Installation Banquet at the Japa-nese American National Museum. It was a beau-tiful evening with reflec-tive speeches delivered by Drs. Mark Sawamura and Judy Tong. For those who may not know, Dr. Shishino was one of the founding members of our Society. Dr. Shishino and the other founding members began the Asian Ameri-can Optometric Society (originally the Japanese American Optometric Society) as a mean to support optometrists and to lend a helping hand during a time of

need. As our economy struggles with the reces-sion, it is again the AAOS’ goal to do what we can to support all of our members. Each year we strive to provide high quality Continuing Education lectures at absolutely no cost to our members, saving each optometrist on average $300 per year if they attend. We’ve been able to do this through the generous support from companies like Alcon, Vistakon, TLC and oth-ers. So that we can con-tinue to receive financial support and offer afford-able Continuing Educa-tion programs to our members, we need to continue to be one of the strongest Societies in California. Our strength is in our numbers! So I encourage you to renew your membership (if you haven’t already done so) or join the AAOS as a first time member. If you know of an optome-trist who isn’t aware of the AAOS, please intro-duce them to us. We’ve even enclosed an appli-

cation for you. I promise you that the return on your membership will be more than you know; not only will you get high quality CE for free, but you may also be helping a colleague through some rough times.

I look forward to seeing you at our Spring CE Symposium on Sunday April 5th and at all AAOS throughout 2009! Thanks for your sup-port!

- Long

President’s Message: Dr. Long Tran

March 2009

Help us go GREEN!!!

Please email me at

cliu.2006@yahoo.com if you would like to

receive these newsletters by email.

were very excited to share a special presentation com-memorating the life of Dr. Shishino. Guests also spent the evening enjoying the mu-seum exhibits and playing Texas Hold’em, Blackjack and

Roulette! The evening would not have been complete with-out good food and drinks- our guests enjoyed delicious appe-tizers, an open

bar, and a lovely sit-down din-ner. We also had great raffle prizes including an i-Pod touch, gift certificates to Macy's, Cheesecake Factory,

Greetings to AAOS,

Thank you to everyone who attended our Annual AAOS Installation Banquet on Satur-day, January 10, 2009. We had a great turn out with over 80 people in at-tendance! This year the banquet was held at the Japanese Ameri-can National Mu-seum and was very special. We honored the life of Dr. Takao Shishino, our founding father of AAOS. Mrs. Helen Shishino attended the event with 10 other family members and we

Coffee Bean, the SPA, movies and more! A special thank you to all our donors and vendors.

Upcoming events: CE on Sun-day April 5th, and our Seniors Award Banquet/ Student Doc-tor Mixer on May 17th. Keep your calen-dars free and we hope to see all of you there!

Dr. Stacey Gin, Trus-tee, Past Social-Chair

2009 Installation Banquet: Commemorating the life of Dr. Takao Shishino

PAGE 2 WWW.ASIANAMERICANOPTOMETRICSOCIETY.ORG VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

This year the banquet was held

at the Japanese American

National Museum and was very

special. We honored the life of

Dr. Takao Shishino, our founding

father of AAOS.

Thanks to our Sponsors for helping fund the event and providing raffle prizes!

Aloha to all the members of the AAOS! I can’t believe another year has passed so quickly! It is time to re-introduce ourselves to the group. This will be my 6th year serving on the board for the AAOS. I have served as the Newsletter Chair for 2 years, Treasurer for 3 years and now your President-Elect for this year. I am look-ing forward to a great year. We have a great group of peo-ple on the board this year who are excited to serve all of you.

As for myself, not much has changed since last year. I still live and practice in South Or-ange County. My neighbor is the self proclaimed “hottest housewife” on the show “Housewives of Orange

County.” I practice about 5 minutes from home and I love

not getting on a freeway to get to work. I am in private practice in Laguna Hills. We have 9 staff members and 3 OD’s including myself. I have been happily married for 12 years and have 3 great kids, Skylar, Payton

and Colby. The family keeps me very busy outside of op-tometry. I find myself at swim meets, basketball games, hula lessons, and hip hop classes for my girls. My son recently turned 2 and he loves cars, trucks and drums. He already put a hole in the wall with his drum sticks, and if you hand him chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant he’ll play those on the table as well. I enjoy spending time with friends and

family, exercising and playing the Tahtian drums.

In any case, please come and join us at our next CE event in April. It is looking like a great event with some great groups partnering with us in sponsor-ship. Please support our spon-sors as well. They will help keep the costs of our AAOS events to a minimum. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to con-tact me any-time. Thank you for your support of the AAOS!

-Aaron

welcome the new board members to the team. I am looking forward to this year’s AAOS events and hope to see many of you at the next CE event. Make sure to stay tuned

Hello AAOS members! I’m excited to join the board for a 2nd year as the Administra-tive Assistant. It has been a wonderful experience working with the previous board and I

to your up-coming news-letters for in-formation re-garding fu-ture events!

-Christina

Meet Our 2009 Board

PAGE 3 EYE TO AAOS VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

President– Elect: Dr. Aaron Sako

Administrative Assistant: Dr. Christina Leung

Treasurer: Dr. Shawn Yamamoto

Hello Everyone,

I have the privi-lege of being the

Treasurer for the upcoming year. Aaron has done a great job and will be helping me out during this transition to make sure I do not become the

Next Madoff. But in all seri-ousness, we all know the up-coming years will be a financial challenge for all of us. So we just ask that you all continue to support our sponsors and help keep our membership strong. That way, we can continue to

offer our FREE CE’s and re-duced member events. See you all at the upcoming CE!

-Shawn

website, www.AsianAmericanOptometricSociety.org or you can email me at KfukudaOD@gmail.com and I can email one to you. I have been trying to reach all mem-bers, past and present to update mailing/email addresses. I ap-preciate the responses from those of you who have confirmed your information. If you have not yet responded, please email me with your current informa-

tion so that I can keep it up-to-date in our files. I’ll be looking for those ap-plications in the mail and I’m looking forward to see-ing many of you at our up-coming events!!!

-Kenny

Happy 2009 Eve-ryone!!!

I can’t believe another year is

upon us. For those of you who have already sent in your applications for this year, thank you very much. For those of you who haven’t yet, you should be receiving one with this newsletter. If not, you can get one from our

Hello everyone,

I have the honor of serving as your Education Chair this year. Our Spring CE event is just around the corner and we have four excellent speakers sched-uled for you. Our speakers in-clude Dr. David Sendrowski, Dr. Steven Ferrucci, Dr. Cha-rissa Lee, and our very own AAOS president, Dr. Long Tran. The event is located at:

Brea Embassy Suites 900 E. Birch Street Brea, CA 92821

The CE will be held on SUNDAY, APRIL 5 from 8am to 2pm with a hot breakfast pro-vided. Please be

on the lookout for an e-mail from AAOS in the coming days to sign up. Space is limited so please sign up soon.

Please also mark your calen-dars for all our future CE events as we schedule our spring event for the first Sun-day in April and the summer event for the third Sunday in

August. The cost is ZERO as a benefit for our members.

I look forward to working with you in the future. If you have any suggestions, please me an e-mail at jlee@scco.edu

-John

PAGE 4 WWW.ASIANAMERICANOPTOMETRICSOCIETY.ORG VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Membership Chair: Dr. Kenny Fukuda

Department of Education: Dr. John Lee

Social Chair: Dr. Krystal Kawamoto

Hello Again!

I am thrilled to be return-ing for my 3rd year on the AAOS board. My, how time flies! I guess that means we’ve been having fun, and that is exactly what my goal will be for this upcoming year.

As Social Chair, I want to make sure all of our mem-

bers get a chance to join in on the fun that AAOS has to offer. Keep your eyes and ears open for some great events coming up, such as our student/doctor mixer at the delectable Wildfish Grill. We’re also in the process of planning numerous CE’s and our annual Installation Ban-quet, which should be better and bigger than ever.

We’ve got a great group working for you this year. I look forward to see-ing each and everyone of you at our future events.

-Krystal

2009 ASIAN AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC SOCIETY Membership Application

Last Name: First Name:_____________ Middle Initial:___

Email Address: Spouse’s Name (if applicable): ___________

Optometry School Attended/Year of Graduation:

Referred By:

Primary Address and Phone Number: Please circle one OFFICE / HOME

Number & Street Name City State Zip Code

( )

Phone #

If you would like to make a contribution along with your annual dues,

please check the appropriate line(s) below:

____ AAOS Foundation (New!) $________

Dr. Rodger T. Kame Memorial Fund $

SCCO Scholarship Fund $

X Annual Membership (see membership scale below) $

Make checks payable to: AAOS

Please Kenneth Fukuda, O.D. Annual Membership Fee Scale

Mail To: 9615 Nightingale Ave. If you graduated in:

Fountain Valley, CA 92708 2009 (1st year) Membership is FREE 2008 (2nd year)

Only $25

2007 and before $75

Please Kenneth Fukuda, O.D. Annual Membership Fee Scale

Mail To: 9615 Nightingale Ave. If you graduated in:

Fountain Valley, CA 92708 2009 (1st year) Membership is FREE 2008 (2nd year)

Only $25

2007 and before $75

PAGE 5 EYE TO AAOS VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

April 5: Spring C.E. 2009 Symposium FEATURING 6 HOURS OF CONTINUING EDUCATION

Agenda: 8:00 – 9:40 First Line Glaucoma Treatment (2 Hours CE) David Sendrowski, O.D. Professor, SCCO 9:50 – 11:30 Current Trends and Uses of Soft Contact Lenses (2 Hours CE) Long Tran, O.D. and Charissa Lee, O.D Assistant Professor, SCCO and Private Practice 11:50 – 1:30 AREDS and Beyond: What’s new in the fight against ARMD (2 Hours CE) Steven Ferrucci, O.D. Associate Professor, Sepulveda VA Ambulatory Care Center When: Sunday April 5, 2009 Time: 8AM-2PM Where: Brea Embassy Suites 900 E. Birch Street Brea, CA 92821 (714) 990-6000 Free parking is available at the hotel. Breakfast will be served. The cost is ZERO as a benefit for our members. Cost is $100 for non-members. Space is limited so please sign up soon! Deadline is March 29, 2009. Please email John Lee (jlee@scco.edu) to be added to the list

May 17: Honors Banquet

Wildfish Seafood Grille

August 15: AAOS Takao Shishino Education

Symposium

Upcoming Events:

PAGE 6 EYE TO AAOS VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Help us go GREEN!!!

Please email me at

cliu.2006@yahoo.com if you would like to

receive these newsletters by email.

Medical Abstract:

by: Mark Sawamura

Many of the members of AAOS have a Japanese American patient base. This is a recent article that I found that dealt specifically with Japanese Americans that I thought the members would find inter-esting and applicable to clinical practice. I have summarized the contents of the article.

The Characteristics of Glaucoma in Japanese Americans

Pekmezci M, Vo B, Lim AK, et al. Archives of Ophthalmology, Feb. 2009.

This article was recently published in the Archives of Ophthalmology and is a unique study because it focuses on the Japanese American (JA) population. There are many prevalence studies that have been published in the Japanese ophthalmology journals on the native population, but very little, if any on the JA population.

Under the institutional review boards of the University of California, San Francisco and the Califor-nia Pacific Medical Center, a 10-year retrospective study was undertaken to determine various char-acteristics of glaucoma in Japanese Americans. Patient records were analyzed from two practices; one general ophthalmology office and one glaucoma specialty practice. Japanese American heritage was self-identified by a questionnaire.

Of the 1732 patient records that were evaluated, it was determined that 112 subjects had a diagnosis of glaucoma. Of these patients with glaucoma, 70% had normal tension glaucoma, 17% had primary open angle glaucoma, 2 patients with angle closure, 3 with mixed mechanism glaucoma, and 10 with secondary glaucoma. The mean age of the patient base was 58.5 years (range, 18-99 years), of which, 36% were males. The investigators found a mean IOP was 16.49 mm Hg and mean CCT of 543.5microns. In the patients over the age of 40, 8.3% had glaucoma and 13.3% were labeled as glau-coma suspects. Of interest, when comparing the glaucoma to the non-glaucomatous patients, the glaucoma patients had statistically significant thinner corneas (524 microns vs. 554 microns) and higher IOPs (19.23 mm Hg vs. 15.92 mm Hg). Splitting out the NTG patients from the POAG pa-tients, the mean IOP and CCTs were (17.04 mm Hg, 516 microns) vs (20.23 mm Hg, 523 microns), respectively. The authors also found that the patients with glaucoma were older (mean, 72.4 years) in comparison to the non-glaucomatous patients (mean, 55.9 years).

In comparison to the large Tajimi population based study in mainland Japan (2004), the rates of glaucoma were higher in the Japanese American population (8.3% vs. 5%). Partly this is due to the selection of patients from a glaucoma specialty clinic, which may skew the results relative to the total population. What was found in both populations, were high rates of NTG. In Japan, the proportion of NTG of all glaucoma cases was found to be 92.3%, while the JA population has a rate of 70%. The authors noted that this may be due to the differences in the mainland Japanese population and Japa-nese Americans in terms of diet, heterogenicity, access to medical care, and environment. Also noted as a difference was a higher average CCT and IOP which may skew the classification of patients to-wards the POAG group.

PAGE 7 W W W . A S I A N A M E R I C A N O P T O M E T R I C S O C I E T Y . O R G VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors for making our events possible!

Congratuations Brenda Lien!!! Winner of the Fall 2008 Newsletter Trivia.

Enjoy the Cheesecake gift certificate!

PAGE 8 EYE TO AAOS VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Silver Sponsor

Bronze Sponsor

and the student research com-mittee at SCCO. She is very thankful for the op-portunities optome-try school has given her. She has gone on an SVOSH trip to Mexico, completed a NEI sum-mer research internship at SUNY, and traveled around the country for various optome-try conferences. She has a very diverse set of rotation sites: a VA hospital in Las Vegas, NV; an Indian Health Site in

Shonto, AZ; and a family prac-tice setting (Optometric Center

of Los Angeles) in Los Ange-les, CA. Upon graduating in 2009, Reena will be pursuing a Pediatric Residency at the State

University of New York (SUNY), College of Optome-try. - Reena

Reena Patel was born and raised in Orange County, CA. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2004, earning her Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences. She is currently in her fourth year at SCCO and loves serving as an AAOS li-ason. Reena is very passionate about the field of optometry and enjoys being an active member of the profession. She is a member of Beta Sigma Kappa, Omega Delta Epsilon

I am pleased to be serving as a 4th year liaison for the organi-zation. Originally from St. Louis, Mis-souri, I gradu-ated from the University of Missouri - Co-lumbia in 2005 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences. I enjoy be-ing involved in the optometry community. I served as the local liaison for the American

Public Health Association in 2006-2007 and organized a public health presentation on

campus to educate students on the importance of optome-try's role in public health. I have been actively involved in Special Olympics for the past

3 years. I have also been on a SVOSH trip in El Salvador where I was able to provide eye exams with other optometrists across the U.S. to the under-served population. I have been

very lucky with my 4th year rotation sites. I've had well-rounded clinical experiences in Las Vegas; Bethesda, MD; and San Diego at sev-eral different practice mo-dalities.

-Linda

She graduated from California State University of Fullerton

with a degree in Biology and a minor in Business Administration. In her free time she enjoys bowling, snowboarding and shopping. Upon graduation, Ngoc would

Ngoc Trieu is currently a 4th year student at SCCO and she enjoys serving as the stu-dent liaison for AAOS. She is currently at her last rotation site in Le-moore,CA at a naval base. Prior to that she was at OCLA and VAOC.

like to work in a private practice and hopes to serve in the Vietnamese community.

-Ngoc

Meet the AAOS Liaisons: 4th Year Students

PAGE 9 WWW.ASIANAMERICANOPTOMETRICSOCIETY.ORG VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Reena Patel

Ngoc Trieu

Linda Pang

Jill is a current third year stu-dent at SCCO, and honored to be serving as a student liaison for the AAOS. Before starting her optometric education at SCCO, Jill spent four years at the University of California, San Diego, where she received a diverse education with a B.S. in Biology and B.A. in History. In the last three years, Jill has had numerous opportunities to be involved in the optometric

community, such as traveling to Boston for the AOA confer-ence, participating in numer-ous vision screenings, serving as treas-urer of NOSA, be-ing a mem-ber of the Student Clinic Advisory, and many more. Jill is excited to be fin-

ishing the last months of her third year and start her fourth year rota-tions at sites in Alaska, Oklahoma, and Ari-zona.

-Jill

in the student body, and for the past two years, she has served as Class Co-Vice President in raising money and addressing the needs of her classmates. As a student liaison for AAOS, she will further represent her colleagues on an intraprofes-sional level. Starting this Au-gust, Julia will look forward to

Julia is currently a third year student at Southern California College of Optometry. Prior to that, she graduated from Cal State Fuller-ton with a major in Bio-logical Sciences and a minor in Chemistry. She en-joys being an active member

her rotation sites at Pearl Harbor, HI, VA Salt Lake City, UT, and IHS Polacca, AZ.

- Julia

Meet the AAOS Liaisons: 3rd Year Students

for the past 2 years and on the cur-riculum committee at SCCO this year. He has volunteered at many different events such as the Special Olympics and other vision screen-ings, as well as being fortunate enough to be a member of the Class of 2010 Medical Missionaries with a vision spending time in El Salvador providing vision care and glasses to the local people.

When not busy with school, Jeff enjoys playing golf and all

sports, cooking, and spending time with friends and family. He also loves the beach, and in the summer you can find him working for the LA County Fire

Department as an Ocean Lifeguard in his spare time in the South Bay. -Jeff

Jeff is very excited to be a part of the AAOS this year. He was born in Torrance, Ca and has lived his whole life in Manhattan Beach until leaving to attend the Univer-sity of California at Berkeley. GO BEARS! Upon graduating with a BA in Integrative Biology, Jeff moved back down to So Cal and is currently finishing his 3rd year at the Southern California College of Op-tometry and about to enter his 4th year rotations this coming May.

Jeff has always tried to be actively involved while in school and has served as Class President

PAGE 10 EYE TO AAOS VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 1

Jill Chen

Jeff Nishi

Julia Tran

“The purpose of the Asian American Optometric So-

ciety is to promote and maintain a social, cultural,

scientific, and educational interchange of informa-

tion and experiences between the members” Asian American Optometric Society 308 East Broadway Glendale, CA 91205

A P U B L I C A T I O N O F T H E A S I A N A M E R I C A N

O P T O M E T R I C S O C I E T Y

MEMBERSHIP: Kenny Fukuda, O.D. 714.403.1395 kfukudaod@gmail.com EDUC. & RESEARCH John Lee, O.D. 714.992.7837 jlee@scco.edu ADMINISTRATIVE ASST. Christina Leung, O.D. 714.864.1175 christinaleungod@yahoo.com PUBLICATIONS Connie Liu, O.D. 626.622.6331 cliu.2006@yahoo.com

PRESIDENT: Long Tran, O.D., FAAO 714.992.7873 ltran@scco.edu PRESIDENT ELECT: Aaron Sako, O.D. 949.586.8200 aaronsako@yahoo.com SOCIAL CHAIR: Krystal Kawamoto, O.D. 818.642.3803 kkawamoto.2008@scco.edu TREASURER: Shawn Yamamoto, O.D. 310.344.3260 yamay33@gmail.com

WEBMASTER: Jason Lam, O.D. 818-709-2290 jlamod@gmail.com TRUSTEES: Steve Bae, O.D. 323.938.5558 stevebaeod@sbcglobal.net Stacey Gin, O.D., FAAO 714.308.5036 staceygin@gmail.com Greg Kame, O.D., FAAO 213.628.7419 drkame@aol.com Charissa Lee, O.D. 310.714.7363 charissa_lee@msn.com

2009 Asian American Optometric Society Board

Help us go GREEN!!!

Please email me at cliu.2006@yahoo.com if you would like to receive these newsletters by email.

Mark Sawamura, O.D., FAAO 714.449.7407 msawamura@scco.edu Don Matsumoto, O.D. 310.390.9527 cdmatsumoto@hotmail.com Cindy Siu, O.D., FAAO 949.640.2023 dr.siu@verizon.net Dan Tang, O.D. 310.557.6401 danielstang@yahoo.com Judy Tong, O.D., FAAO 714.449.7429 jtong@scco.edu

To learn more about the AAOS Foundation and future AAOS events

please visit us at our website:

www.asianamericanoptometricsociety.org