Presentations in “To operate or not to operate? A surgical consulting symposium” that took place on Friday afternoon demonstrated the complex decision-making processes involved in the undertaking of successful vitreoretinal surgery. 

“In this session, an international group of speakers are presenting a series of cases, some complex and some more routine, and will be walking the audience through the management decisions they made along the way.,” said Roxane Hillier (United Kingdom) who co-chaired the symposium with Dr Siegfried Priglinger (Germany). 

The session was designed to be interactive. Presenters paused throughout their cases to consult members of the expert 

panel for thoughts and ideas about surgical management.

Dr Hillier said, “Often, there are several reasonable options for managing a given surgical dilemma, and we think the interactive format of this symposium makes for an engaging, stimulating and educational session.”

In addition to serving as co-chair, Dr Hillier presented a case of refractory full thickness macular hole in the only seeing eye of a working man with Alport syndrome. Her formal presentation outlined her surgical decisions and care provided to the patient over several years as she addressed the question of “what is the best approach for persisting macular hole?”.

Dr Priglinger shared a few cases involving non-penetrating macular holes to discuss when and how these patients should be operated on. “In the case of macular lamellar holes, which often have a good course with only slow progression, it is sometimes difficult to make the right decision regarding the question of ‘To treat or not to treat?’,” he said. 

Other speakers in the symposium included Dr Heinrich Heinmann (United Kingdom) who presented a case of an unusual retinal detachment. Dr Lars-Olof Hattenbach (Germany) reviewed the posterior management of anterior segment complications in a presentation titled “Chain reaction”. Dr Marta S Figueroa (Spain) focused on management of myopic maculopathy and whether foveal sparing internal limiting membrane peeling is always necessary. Concluding the symposium, Dr Carl-Friedrich Arndt (France) presented three cases of choroidal detachment, giving his presentation the subtitle “rien ne va plus?”. For non-French speakers, that translates to “nothing is going well.”

Registered attendees can watch the session On Demand.