Prof Anat Loewenstein, Euretina President, officially welcomed attendees to the 24th Euretina Congress at the Opening Ceremony on Thursday afternoon.
“It is wonderful to see so many of you who came for this year’s event,” she said. “We are very fortunate to have this meeting in Barcelona, a beautiful city that is the symbol for both innovation and tradition. But I think the reason that we are really fortunate is because we are retina specialists dealing with retinal disease at this time. I think it is unprecedented to see so many innovations, new drugs, new technologies, artificial intelligence developments, and many new things that will make the life of our patients and ours so much better.”
Prof Loewenstein thanked everyone for making the effort to attend the annual Congress. “This meeting is successful because so many experts from all over the world come to teach, communicate their knowledge, discuss and exchange ideas, and collaborate with others. It is also successful because there are so many attendees who are willing to open their eyes, learn and bring the knowledge to their countries and to their patients,” she said.
Dr Loewenstein also thanked the meeting’s sponsors without whom the meeting would not have been possible, and she encouraged attendees to take the time to connect with colleagues from other countries. Then she paused and shifted focus, noting the need to reflect on the tragic loss of Prof Ramin Tadayoni, President of Euretina. who passed away in April while representing Euretina at a meeting in Brazil.
“In April of this year we lost one of the most visionary scientists and clinicians of the field,” Prof Loewenstein said. “Ramin was an amazing scientist, clinician, surgeon, researcher, collaborator, board member, president of Euretina, and above all, an extremely good and loyal friend in good and bad times.”
To pay tribute to Prof Tadayoni, Prof Loewenstein invited Prof Bahram Bodaghi to speak. Continuing the tribute, Dr Martin Zinkernagel, Euretina Executive Secretary, introduced a short video tribute from the Board, about Prof Tadayoni’s personal qualities and contributions.
After the audience stood for a moment of silence to remember Prof Tadayoni, the opening session continued with Prof Loewenstein introducing Prof Kyoko Ohno-Matsui (Japan), who presented the Euretina Keynote Lecture titled “Pathologic myopia: New horizons through cutting-edge imaging technologies”. The focus of the lecture was on the vision-threatening complications of pathologic myopia and insights gained from their characterisation through the application of three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging, ultra-widefield optical coherence tomography (UWF-OCT), and polarization-sensitive OCT.
To honour Prof Tadayoni’s memory, Euretina also established the Ramin Tadayoni Award with support from Oculis. The first-time recipient of the award was Prof Andrea Govetto (Italy) who was chosen for his work “Development of a computational model of fluid flow and retinal tissue deformation in macular edema: Translational applications to clinical practice.”
Other awards announced during the opening ceremony included the Euretina Retinal Medicine Clinical Research Awards, which were presented to Maximilian Pfau (Switzerland) for his work “Enhanced vision and imaging tests for enabling treatment trials in early and intermediate AMD” and Javier Zarranz-Ventura (Spain) for “Prediction of treatment needs using a hybrid artificial intelligence-based management assistance tool in neovascular age-related macular degeneration.”
Next, Dr Alistair Laidlaw (UK) named the first, second, and third place winners of the August Deutman Awards recognising the top Free Papers, ePosters, and video competition entries at the meeting. The first-place recipients were Stefano Mercuri (Italy) for best ePoster, Baruch Kuppermann (United States) for best free paper, and Juan Giralt (Spain) for best video competition entry. More information on all the winners can be found HERE.
Finally, Prof Nicole Eter announced that 53 candidates passed the 2024 FEBOS-Retina exam. She recognised Clara Bastons I Compta (Spain) as the top scoring candidate.
Registered attendees can access this session in full ON DEMAND.
