ESCRS Preview

This year's European Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgeons' Congress will be held in Vienna, Austria and it will be of no surprise that the packed programme, including symposia, courses, live surgeries, posters and free papers, will once again be the highlight of the European cataract and refractive surgeons' event calendar. In addition to the full five-day programme, this year, delegates and attendees can also look forward to a few pre-event highlights, as well as free-of-charge instructional courses.

To help you on your way to a successful and enjoyable event, OTEurope and our Editorial Advisory Board member Dr Günther Grabner have compiled some recommendations for each day.

Friday 16 September

Over the course of the day attendees can enjoy several talks from key opinion leaders in the field of glaucoma surgery. Some of our highlights include Dr John Thygesen's early morning talk on "Evaluation of the Angle before Surgery", Dr Anton Hommer's discussion on lasers in his talk "SLT/ALT" and before lunch the revelations of the fiveyear data of "Tubes versus Trabeculectomy", which will be given by Dr Keith Barton. After lunch there will be a session on DS-Canal procedures that will be moderated by Dr Tarek Shaarawy and Dr Nitin Anand to look out for.

The only non-surgical part of the day, the Dimmer Lecture, will take place after the afternoon coffee break and will be a sure-fire hit with the audience. Given by Professor Wolfgang Drexler, the lecture will encapsulate optical coherence tomography in a comprehensible format and should provide some insights into the vast applications of the technology that we will surely be witnessing in the future. To round the day off there will be a session on Cataracts and Angle Closure where Professor Thierry Zeyen will compare combined and separate filtration and lens procedure.

However, glaucoma is not the only subject on the agenda before the ESCRS congress begins, another highlight will be the EuCORNEA day running on both Friday 16 and Saturday 17 September. This will be the 2nd meeting from the European Society of Cornea & Ocular Surface Disease Specialists and will feature keynote lectures, industry satellite meetings and free papers. Delegates will not only be able to enjoy talks on a multitude of subject matters in corneal surgery but can also learn about diseases, disorders and corneal imaging.

In addition to all this, there will be the EuCornea Medal Lecture, which will be presented by Dr Peter R. Laibson at 10.30 am on Friday. Dr Laibson is an expert in the field of corneal diseases and is currently an attending surgeon and director emeritus of the Cornea Service at Wills Eye Institute and professor of ophthalmology at Jefferson Medical College. His Lecture will focus on "Herpes Simplex Keratitis: A Fifty Year Retrospective" and as one of the initiators in the research of the first anti-viral drug for herpes in the eye, we are certain that this will be a great overview of the topic.