CHALLENGING TIMES

As president of EURETINA, it gives me great pleasure to write this editorial for EuroTimes. These are busy times for the society and we have recently concluded our 4th EURETINA Winter Meeting in Rome which was a great success. We are also busy preparing for the 14th EURETINA Congress which will take place in London from 11-14 September 2014, and I advise you to visit our website at: www.euretina.org to keep up to date with all the latest news on the meeting.

Our 13th Congress in Hamburg last year was a great success with more than 4,000 delegates attending. As my friend and colleague Gisbert Richard pointed out in his presidential address in Hamburg, when we held our first congress we had 300 attending guests. The phenomenal growth in the number of delegates attending the meeting is a tribute to the hard work done by Prof Richard and the other founding members in establishing EURETINA as the world’s leading retina organisation.

So what lies ahead for EURETINA? We cannot stand still and we must continue to build the society. Our challenge every year as we prepare for a new congress is to make sure we have an excellent Scientific Programme with contributions from some of the key opinion leaders from all over the world. At our Winter Meeting we discussed some of the major issues of interest to retinal specialists including Metabolomics in Diabetes Mellitus, Methods to Evaluate the Retinal Circulatory Disorders and Retinal Metabolism and New Therapy Delivery Methods which generated some excellent debate. We are looking forward to continuing these debates in London.

It is important that we talk to each other about the key areas that are of interest and concern to us but it is also important that we backup our talk with actions. For that reason, EURETINA is continuing to build a strong research and educational base. As I discussed last year in an interview with EuroTimes, we need to develop diagnostic techniques that will detect more accurately and consistently the structural changes that correspond with losses and gains in vision. In addition, we need to develop intravitreal agents that will remain effective in the eye for longer than is currently the case.

It should be remembered that EURETINA is still a comparatively young organisation. Much credit must be given to the pioneers who established and built the society but another major challenge facing us is to make sure that the young ophthalmologists who are the future of retinal medicine will play a major part in the society. This must be done, not only by encouraging young ophthalmologists to attend our meetings, but also by inviting them to sit on our committees and play an active part in the day-to-day running of EURETINA. Let me conclude by thanking the editors of EuroTimes for giving me the opportunity to address the readers. I am delighted to note that the coverage of retina in the magazine is continuing to increase.