Macular hole study wins EURETINA Poster Award

Inverted flap peeling technique safe and effective for large and small macular holes

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Photo of Dermot McGrath

Giulia Airaghi
The winners of the poster awards at the 9th EURETINA Winter Meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, covered an interesting spectrum of hot topics in current retinal research from gene therapy approaches and OCT imaging utility to flap peeling techniques in macular hole surgery. Announcing the three award-winners, Sebastian Wolf, President of EURETINA, said that the high standard of entries had made selecting eventual winners all the more difficult for the judging panel. “It is gratifying to see so many high-quality poster entries for our winter meeting and it underscores just how vibrant the state of research is at the moment in the field of retina”, he said. First place and a cheque for €2,000 went to Giulia Airaghi from Italy for her presentation of “Inverted internal limited membrane flap peeling technique for large macular holes: 1-year results”. Dr Airaghi’s study included 89 eyes of 85 patients who underwent 25-gauge pars plana vitrectomy surgery with inverted flap or standard peeling technique for full thickness macular hole. The authors concluded that the inverted flap peeling technique was safe and effective for both large and small macular holes. They also found that small holes with prompt closure equated to a higher postoperative visual acuity, while larger holes seemed to benefit from a longer closure time. Prizes 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”.
Tags: 9th EURETINA Winter Meeting, poster presentations