EURETINA 2024: The future of medical retina is "brilliant" for clinicians and patients

At this year's EURETINA Congress, we caught up with Enrico Borrelli, MD, FEBO, during a break from his busy schedule. He is Associate Professor and Senior Consultant in Medical Retina, Università degli Studi di Torino [University of Turn], Italy. We spoke with him just after his presentation, "The pearls and pitfalls of new OCT and OCT-A machines in the clinical setting." That presentation was part of a larger symposia that asked a vital question: What will new imaging machines and new measurements contribute to our understanding of retinal diseases?

In this video, he shares what clinicians need to know about modern imaging modalities, what they can expect to see in the medical retina space and what makes the annual EURETINA conference stand out.

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Enrico Borrelli, MD, FEBO: My name is Enrico Borrelli. I'm Associate Professor and senior consultant in medical retina at the University of Turin, in Italy.

So this was a great session, as there was a mix of deep learning, imaging modalities, all very important stuff in our clinical practice. We always use imaging modalities in our clinical practice, and the application of deep learning on our imaging data is important for our clinical practice.

OCT and OCT-A have completely change our clinical practice. However, there are some limitations to consider when we get our imaging and...when we see our data. First, the most important in our clinical practice is the ability to obtain formatted data for both OCT and OCT-A. However, again, there are some pitfalls to consider, and probably the most important is the absence of any information regarding discontinuity of the blood retinal barrier. This is important for vascular disorders, such as diabetic retinopathy, but this is also important for choroidal orders, such as central serous chorioretinopathy.

So, in this session, we had a discussion on these. This is important, again, for our everyday clinical practice. We do try to have consistent protocols when we perform imaging in our patients. All of our patients [undergo] most of the modalities, including the structural OCT and OCT-A. I must admit that structural OCT is probably the most important in our clinical practice. OCT-A may increase our insights in some disorders. However, it is always important to also consider other imaging modalities, including dye angiography as an example. When we see patients with sacroserous chorioretinopathy or patients with diabetic retinopathy, we may want to also perform dye angiography, as this kind of modality may increase our insights in our patients. When this may significantly affect our clinical decision, we may make decisions regarding treatment as an example, based on the dye angiography results.

I want to highlight that medical retina is going to experience a very brilliant period in the next few years, as a result of new treatments that are in the pipeline. We had some great insights from this EURETINA. So probably, we are going to experience a very brilliant period in the next few years. In our clinical practice, durability of treatment in neovascular AMD or diabetic retinopathy is an important topic. I was surprised that new treatments may really achieve a long durability. So probably our clinical practice is going to change over the next few years.

I must say that EURETINA is a place full of opportunities: the opportunity of getting new collaborations, opportunities to get funding, opportunity of getting new contacts. So the most important thing about this EURETINA is probably the opportunities, a very long list of opportunities.