Aqueous humor outflow: what do we know? Where will it lead us?

The second annual ARVO/Pfizer Ophthalmic Research Institute conference was held Friday and Saturday, April 28 and 29, 2006, at the Fort Lauderdale Grande Hotel and Yacht Club, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The conference, funded by The ARVO Foundation for Eye Research through a grant from Pfizer Ophthalmics, provided an opportunity to gather experts from within and outside ophthalmology to develop strategies to improve research and clinical care in areas of ophthalmology related to preventable vision loss and blindness. This year’s conference focused on aqueous humor outflow. A working group of 31 researchers on aqueous outflow, 8 scientists working on interests other than aqueous humor outflow but with expertise in areas relevant to the field, and 11 observers from ARVO, Pfizer, and clinical and basic ophthalmic research convened on April 28, 2006, to evaluate the current understanding of the aqueous humor outflow pathway. The goals were to compare similarities between ocular aqueous humor outflow and fluid flow in other tissues of the body, to critique conventional ideas, to identify the most important scientific questions, and to discuss strategies to answer these questions. The meeting format emphasized discussion and concentrated on questions within four general areas of outflow research: