Education under the spotlight

Building on the success of last year’s meeting in Budapest, the 9th EURETINA Winter Meeting in Prague provided a timely update on key educational and research topics in the field of retina. Hundreds of delegates made the trip to the elegant capital of the Czech Republic for a short but intense programme that incorporated main symposia on fundamental aspects of retinal research, quick-fire free papers, interesting case studies and a wide variety of poster presentations. Welcoming delegates to Prague, Sebastian Wolf, President of EURETINA, said that the society was delighted to be hosting a meeting in Prague for the first time. “It is a real honour to be here in this beautiful, historic city and to continue our efforts to expand the influence of EURETINA across Europe. My sincere thanks to our local hosts, the Czech Vitreoretinal Society, for all their valuable support and collaboration in bringing this meeting to Prague for the first time,” he said. Dr Wolf said that the goal of this year’s meeting was to continue to put the spotlight on clinical research and education. “We introduced a new programme format with an increased clinical and educational focus in Budapest last year and received a lot of positive feedback to this change. The quality of abstract submissions received for the Prague meeting has been very impressive and we believe our delegates will benefit greatly from the high-quality programme on offer at this year’s meeting,” he said. In addition to well-attended keynote sessions on topics such as diabetic retinopathy, retinal dystrophies, OCT imaging and AMD, the free paper session on Saturday highlighted the current vibrant state of retinal research and provided a welcome update on a number of pivotal clinical trials currently under way. In between sessions, delegates also had the opportunity to browse the wide variety of posters on display, covering all aspects of the retinal subspecialty from surgical techniques and experimental science through to ground-breaking research in gene therapy and novel drug delivery systems. The prize for best poster and a cheque for €2,000 at this year’s meeting went to Giulia Airaghi from Italy for her study of “Inverted internal limited membrane flap peeling technique for large macular holes: 1-year results”. Second and third prize with a cheque of €1,000 each were also awarded to Jong Soo Lee of South Korea for “Perioperative intraretinal fluid observed on optical coherence tomography in epiretinal membrane” and Francisco Javier Diaz-Corralas of Spain for “Gene therapy using RAAV2-HDJ-1 protects the retina of NRF2-/- mice” respectively.

Tags: education, EURETINA, Winter Meeting