SLOVENIAN HOSTS WELCOME ESCRS

Meeting Report
Addressing the ESCRS Winter Meeting in Ljubljana, president of the ESCRS, Roberto Bellucci, said he was delighted to welcome delegates as this was the first time that an ESCRS meeting had taken place in Slovenia. “We are very pleased to be working with our friends and colleagues from the Slovenian Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgeons [SSCRS],” said Dr Bellucci, “and I would like to give special thanks to Dr Vladimir Pfeifer and Dr Marko Hawlina for their assistance and encouragement,” he said.

Dr Bellucci said that this was his first meeting as president of ESCRS and he looked forward to working with members of the society over the next two years. “The members are the ESCRS and with their support we will continue to grow,” he said.

Cornea Day
The congress opened with the Annual Cornea Day organised in conjunction with EuCornea and chaired by Dr José Güell, president EuCornea and Dr Rudy Nuijts, chairperson of the EuCornea Committee.

Other first-day highlights included a symposium on Enhancements in Pseudophakia, courses in Basic Optics, Cataract Surgery and Refractive Surgery and a Young Ophthalmologists Programme. There were also Free Paper sessions on Special Cases and Cataract.

The second day of the congress featured symposia on Applications of the Femtosecond Laser and Update on Endophthalmitis and courses in Cataract Surgery, Refractive Surgery and Cornea, Free Papers on Cataract and ePoster presentations.

The meeting concluded with a symposium on The Perfect Phaco, the SSCRS symposium and a Refractive Surgery Free Paper Session.

Poster prizes
A re-examination of autorefraction after cataract surgery and the results achieved with small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) were the topics of the winning posters in the cataract and refractive categories respectively in the poster competition. In the cataract category, Kunal Gadhvi MD,UK compared the findings of subjective autorefraction and objective retinoscopy in 43 patients who had undergone cataract surgery.

They found that, in general, there was no significant difference between the two measurements regarding spherical equivalent, although there were a few outliers with a difference of up to 2.0 D. There was a significant difference between the two types of measurement regarding cylinder which was +43 D higher with autorefraction (p<0.001). In the refractive category, Paula Verdaguer MD, Spain and associates compared visual outcomes in 35 patients with the small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) technique performed at four different depths, 130 μm, 140 μm, 150 μm and 160 μm using the Carl Zeiss Meditec AG VisuMax femtosecond laser system.

They found that there were no significant differences between the four groups in terms of visual acuity, refractive outcomes or complication rates using the four different deepness of SMILE procedure. Overall, patients’ mean postoperative UCVA was 0.76 and was 20/25 in 70 per cent of patients. In addition, mean postoperative spherical equivalent SE was -0.22 D and mean postoperative cylinder was 0.20 D (SD 0.55). In addition, there were no complications in any of the groups.