It was a great privilege to attend the ESASO medical retina module held at Rome, Italy in February 2018. I was excited about the program from the minute I received the final program schedule from my sponsors. The co-ordinators Ms. Simona and Ms. Fabiana were always available to answer all our queries. When I looked at the program, I realized we would have the rare opportunity to hear from some world famous researchers in the field of vitreoretina. I was thrilled to know that there would be interactive classes with the likes of Dr Francesco Bandello, Dr Giuseppe Querques,
Dr Sandrine Zweifel and Dr Stela Vujosevic. I’ve followed the work of these great researchers from a couple of years ever since I joined vitreoretinal fellowship. It was indeed a great honour to hear them speak and they were open to any number of questions both during and after classes. One more striking thing was that all the lectures were made available to us, for our perusal at our leisure, on a platform in a downloadable format. That is a very rare thing because in most meetings, speakers are unwilling to share their presentations. There were excellent lectures by Dr Pavesio on uveitis on the last day as well. We managed to squeeze in some time for local sight-seeing in Rome in the evenings. It was nice to explore Rome and its ancient history.
It was a great learning experience, a great opportunity to network and collaborate with researchers across Europe and an excellently designed program, which is very high yield for every young and enthusiastic retina specialist. I will be more than willing to attend again!