The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Mary Qiu, MD: Hi, I'm Mary Qiu, MD, and I'm the director of the glaucoma fellowship at Cole Eye Institute at Cleveland Clinic. I just comoderated a session at the Glaucoma Subspecialty Day at AAO 2026 about surgical pearls that we teach our fellows on behalf of the glaucoma fellowship directors. I have Elena Bitrian, MD, with me; she’s the glaucoma fellowship director at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Elena, can you tell us a little bit about what you talked about in your presentation?

Elena Bitrian, MD: We talked about angle surgery and giving some tips that we teach our fellows. It’s very important to visualize the angle well and to be delicate and precise when doing the surgeries. We have a lot of technology, but we need to go back to the basics—know where we are, be extremely delicate, angle the instruments up 15 degrees, manage the bleeding intraoperatively, and always be sure where we are in the eye. If we are not sure where the anatomy is, we do not proceed with treatment in that case. We also explain how to troubleshoot some situations, like working through cloudy corneas and how to enhance our visualization of the angle.

Dr. Qiu: Great, thanks Elena for all your fantastic tips. I hope everyone is enjoying the program or will watch online virtually later. And if you’re a resident out there, please apply for glaucoma fellowship with one of us! GP