Think, discuss, act and find answers, says Dr Leigh Spielberg

“This year, I feel like I’m really attending EURETINA for the first time,” I mentioned to someone recently. “Excuse me?” he said. “You’ve been to at least half a dozen already. I’ve seen you there before. I’m sure of it.” “But this time it’s for real,” I replied. This year is my first time attending EURETINA since I completed my vitreoretinal surgery fellowship. It thus once again feels like the first time. I will be there not just for the intellectual stimulation, but also for the practical side of things. This isn’t to say I never previously benefitted from attending – far from it. But this is the first time I need to be here, rather than simply wanting to be here. I’m in Copenhagen to find answers to specific questions that I have, and answers to those that I haven’t yet thought to pose. I want to hear other surgeons describe what they’re thinking about, what interests them and what troubles them. I want to learn things that cannot yet be found in the books, or even in the most current literature. I want to interact with surgeons who have long ago figured out solutions to the problems I currently encounter in the operating room. So, I’ll be attending as many vitreoretinal surgery sessions as I possibly can, from the main sessions to the free papers, from the instructional courses to the satellite meetings. But I’ll also tune into the sessions on medical retina. After all, the distinctions between medical and surgical retina are narrowing just as the surgical indications for various pathologies widen. Just think about AMD-related subretinal hemorrhage: should we treat with a simple anti-VEGF injection; or a combined injection of expansile gas, rTPA and anti-VEGF; or vitrectomy plus subretinal rTPA; or RPE patch transplantation? What about vitreomacular traction? Observe, inject or operate? Besides just attending sessions, there are, at my count, about a dozen reasons that people attend EURETINA. The primary reason, I reckon, is to learn. But there are others. We attend in order to communicate: to speak with like-minded specialists, to meet up with ex colleagues, to regroup with the people with whom we trained. We attend to proudly share our research successes and also find comfort in our collective failures: failure to save a second eye from the damage of submacular hemorrhage, failure to find a good prophylaxis for PVR, failure to bring the closure rate of macular holes to 100 per cent... We come to test new microscopes, acquire new instruments, buy new lenses, browse new books. But we also come to experience and explore a new city, to remove ourselves from the daily routine. I think my favorite reason to attend is so that I may be given the chance to think, rather than to act. As surgeons, we perform one procedure after the other. As retinal specialists, however, we must not only remember to think about what we’re doing, but must also take the time to do so. EURETINA gives us topics to consider and the opportunity, the time and the setting to think about them, to discuss them, to find answers. ∙ Dr Leigh Spielberg is a vitreoretinal and cataract surgeon at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium.