Inside ESCRS: ESCRS Members to Elect Four to Council

Fifteen cataract and refractive surgeons are standing for election to fill four positions on the ESCRS Council of Management, the Society’s governing body.

The council’s membership includes 10 elected positions, four of which will become vacant at the 2023 Annual Congress in Vienna. The term of office for a council member is four years; council members may stand for re-election for an additional four years.

Only one elected council member is permitted from each country, so ESCRS members from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and Portugal are not eligible for this election and cannot be nominated.

The candidates standing for election are as follows:

• Bruce Allan (United Kingdom)
• Miltos Balidis (Greece)
• Joaquín Fernández (Spain)
• Christina Grupcheva (Bulgaria)
• Andrzej Grzybowski (Poland)
• Farhad Hafezi (Switzerland)
• Volodymyr Melnyk (Ukraine)
• Dominique Monnet (France)
• Ewa Mrukwa-Kominek (Poland)
• Mayank Nanavaty (United Kingdom)
• Nic Reus (The Netherlands)
• Zaid Shalchi (United Kingdom)
• Sathish Srinivasan (United Kingdom)
• Julian Stevens (United Kingdom)
• Kristof Vandekerckhove (Switzerland)·   

A candidate must be a full member of the ESCRS for at least the immediate past three consecutive years to be eligible to stand for election. A candidate must be nominated by five other full members of the Society; each full member may only nominate one person as a candidate. Candidates may not nominate themselves.

The election closes on 31 August. Election winners will be announced at the Annual Congress in Vienna and will assume their council positions on 1 January 2024.

Annual Report Highlights 2022 Achievements

ESCRS achievements and initiatives in membership, education, research, charity, and sustainability are among the many topics covered in the Society’s 2022 annual report, which is available on www.escrs.org.

The 38-page report incorporates videos from ESCRS President Oliver Findl and President-elect Filomena Ribiero as well as Education Committee Chair Rudy Nuijts and Research Committee Chair Burkhard Dick. The report presents data on a wide range of topics, including:

• membership by country and type (national society, regular membership, and trainee);
• titles and recipients of research awards;
• attendance at the 2022 Annual Congress and Winter Meeting; and
• donations to charitable projects, especially in sub-Sharan Africa and Ukraine.

It also highlights the many new initiatives ESCRS developed, launched, and/or refined in 2022, such as:

IOL online calculator. The ESCRS IOL calculator is a web application for IOL power calculations that incorporates seven modern formulas simultaneously through real-time integration with partner tools (by web scraping or API integration).

Masterclasses. The Society laid the foundation for two 16-hour educational masterclasses in MIGS and complex cataract surgery in 2022. (See “ESCRS Update” on page 9 for the latest on this initiative.)

ESCRS Mission Zero. ESCRS Mission Zero strives to reduce the carbon footprint of the ESCRS congresses, aiming to be carbon neutral during the 2023 Annual Congress in Vienna. At the 2022 Annual Congress in Milan, only 3.4% of waste was sent to landfills, 31% incinerated, and 64% recycled or reused. Leftover food was donated to Banco Alimentare-Siticibo, a charity in Lombardy working to encourage food security.

Moving surgical simulator. Another new project that began to take shape in 2022 was the moving simulator initiative. ESCRS is providing an Eyesi Surgical Cataract Simulator on loan to affiliated national societies that need better access to this equipment. The national society in that country will host the simulator to allow its membership time to complete a bespoke ESCRS curriculum. (See “ESCRS Update” for more on this initiative.)

EyeSustain. This global coalition of eye societies and ophthalmologists to make ophthalmic care and surgery more sustainable was initiated in 2022 by ESCRS, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ASCRS), and the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).

Sustainable cataract packs. The SIDICS (Sustainability Index for Disposables in Cataract Surgery) Project is an ESCRS-led initiative aiming to create metrics to help cataract surgeons evaluate the overall sustainability of cataract packs (cat packs). The project kicked off with a workshop at the 2022 Annual Congress in Milan.

Young Ophthalmologists for Sustainability (YOFS). Established in the summer of 2022, the YOFS are a team of ESCRS young ophthalmologists, each with the experience or motivation to make ophthalmology sustainable, from 10 different countries.

Aid to Ukraine. In April 2022, ESCRS appealed to sister societies, members, and industry for funds to support a variety of initiatives in Ukraine, such as buying eye drops, arranging observerships outside of Europe for Ukrainian trainees, and giving out 30 travel bursaries to attend the ESCRS Annual Congress. Many in-kind donations came from various industry partners, including ophthalmic sutures, instruments, drugs, disposables, endoscopes, and combined Stellaris machines. The 2022 Annual Congress included a symposium devoted to trauma surgery in which numerous Ukrainian surgeons made valuable contributions.

A brand-new section of the ESCRS iNovation Day programme will focus on doctors, scientists, and other entrepreneurs with innovative concepts to share with the global ESCRS network. “The Innovators Den: EyeCare Pioneers” will help these participants, guiding them through creating a compelling pitch and making the idea a reality. A judging panel will choose three participants to present their ideas live, onstage, during the iNovation Day programme in Vienna.

Read the ESCRS 2022 Annual Report.