WONDERFUL COPENHAGEN

“Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
'Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down”

For those delegates old enough to remember, the city of Copenhagen has been immortalised in Danny Kaye’s song from the 1952 musical“Hans Christian Anderson”.

It’s a beautiful song and it captures the spirit of this wonderful city, the venue for the 2013 European Society of Ophthalmology Congress.

As SOE president Stefan Seregard points out this year’s Congress presents an excellent scientific programme in close collaboration with the European subspecialty, research and educational organisations in ophthalmology.

An outstanding set of invited speakers, including internationally renowned keynote lecturers Roger Hitchings, Tony Moore and Greg Hageman will address pertinent issues and update delegates on the current approaches to clinical problems.

The SOE Congress continues to grow in popularity and this year’s meeting has representatives from 96 different countries.  

 EuroTimes, the official news magazine of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons, is produci ng a newspaper capturing  the meeting highlights on Sunday June 9 and Monday June 10.

 The newspaper is free to all delegates and will be distributed at the Bella  Centre. You can also see the latest breaking news from the meeting at www.eurotimes.org

GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR CHRIS

By Colin Kerr, Executive Editor, EuroTimes

If you were a teenager growing up in the 1960’s, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, released in 1969, would have been part of the soundtrack of your life.

Space travel defined that decade in the same way that the internet defines the times we live in today.

I’d recommend that anyone who loves m music and literature should listen carefully to Bowie’s lyrics and then read “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe, one of the great American novels about the pioneers who put man on the moon (also listen to “Man on the Moon “by REM for a more whimsical insight into the great adventure ).

It started on April 12, 1961 when Yuriy Gagarin, an army major in the Soviet Union remained in orbit for 1 hour and 48 minutes, proving that human beings can survive in space.
http://www.spacechronology.com/1960s.html#ixzz2TA3bOjQJ

For most children and young boys of my generation, the pinnacle of the space age was reached on July 16, 1969 when the American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely landed on the moon, while Michael Collins orbited around it. Their space ship Apollo 11 spent 21 hours and 31 minutes on its surface and returned safely back to Earth.

So where do we go from here?  Commander Chris Hadfield has posted a cover version of Space Oddity, recorded 230 miles above the earth on his last day in charge of the international space station.

Only the great, great songs can bring tears to your eyes, and Hadfield’s version of the Bowie classic is one of them.

The lyrics have been reworked slightly but Hadfield has stayed true to the original and made it even better with a really stunning video.

Welcome home Chris, on behalf of all the ophthalmologists in the world who dare to go where no man or woman has gone before.

THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE

By Colin Kerr, Executive Editor, EuroTimes

I keep returning to The Observer newspaper to read some of the best and incisive writing in the English language.

The cover story in the paper's review section looks at The Whole Earth Catalog and the visionary work of Stewart Brand.

The article features an interview with Brand by Carole Cadwallader whose breathtaking range of ideas has influenced generations of scientists, futurists, architects, storytellers, photographers, inventors and inventors including Steve Jobs.

Brand is now 74 but as Cadwallader points out he is still fit and active and brimming over with new ideas and insights into the way the world has changed and is changing.

Read the full interview at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/05/stewart-brand-whole-earth-catalog

ARE UNIVERSITY LECTURES DOOMED?

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, recently suggested that online courses herald the end of traditional lectures.

In an excellent article in The Observer newspaper, Philip Henshaw, novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of Bath-Spa, UK and John Mullan, writer and professor of English at University College London, went head to head and argued the case for and against.

Henshaw argues: "Since I took to lecturing myself, I generally approached it as cabaret. You and I have stood together and yammered in front of silent audiences of sighing Germans. Since nobody much walked out, we believed ourselves to be extraordinarily fascinating. This discovery for academics is thrilling, and so there is an incentive to hang on to the hour-long lecture. But, realistically, if one wanted to teach anyone anything, I think one should make them participate, interrupt, ask questions, disagree, talk back, and that's the alternative route I've taken. There are probably a dozen lecturers  in this country so brilliant you don't want to do anything but listen to them for an hour. The rest of them should approach learning as an exchange with students."

According to Mullan, this approach is flawed. "Participation, interruption, disagreement – all those student responses you celebrate are virtuous, of course, so you have class or seminar teaching, where they are part of the deal. But sometimes the students want to know what the academic knows," he says.

"Learning shouldn't all be exchanging thoughts with students (and in the sciences and quantitative subjects it often cannot be this). The students can find it frustrating (as they tell us) when they have to spend their time listening to the least informed but most opinionated fellow student in the room."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/05/debate-university-lectures-doomed-philip-hensher-john-mullan

So does this logic apply for ophthalmology students? I'd welcome your comments so let me know your views.

Colin Kerr

Social Media - You Can't Have It All

Colin Kerr


Executive Editor, EuroTimes



I've just returned from the Media Future conference in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, where I hoped to finally unlock the Pandora's Box that holds the answers to my quest for a Social and Digital Media strategy.


 I've been working on this project for the last ten years and still haven't found what I'm looking for. But hope springs eternal and maybe today is the day I will discover my inner New Media Guru.


 Of course, it isn't as easy as that. I met a colleague from a former life yesterday and asked him what he was doing, meaning what line of work he was in. 'I'm just trying to find what this stuff is all about," he replied.


 By 'this stuff' he meant New Media. Like me, he is a dinosaur of the golden age of newspapers and magazines when journalists pounded the keys of their manual typewriter, erased their mistakes with Tippex and kept copies of their articles with carbon sheets imposed on a second sheet of paper.



We carried out our research in a tiny little room known as The Librarybwhere we would spend hours poring over old newspaper cuttings neatly filed in small cardboard folders.


 Thank heaven for Google and the other search engines that have reduced the research timespan from hours to minutes. Thanks also to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the other visionaries who have developed the new technologies that have opened up a brave new media world.


 And hopefully today I too will find what all this "stuff" is about. 

ASCRS WELCOMES BO PHILIPSON AS HONOURED GUEST

Major honour for former programme chairman of ESCRS

By Howard Larkin in Chicago 

In recognition of his prominent role advancing cataract and refractive surgery in Sweden and Europe, incoming ASCRS President David Chang MD welcomed Bo T Philipson MD PhD, Stockholm, Sweden, as an honored guest at this year’s ASCRS Symposium.

“Dr Philipson also played a key role in development of the first OVD as well as heparin-coated IOLs, and the Technis diffractive multifocal IOL,” Dr Chang said.

Dr Chang also noted Dr Philipson’s service as a leader, founder and programme chair of the ESCRS, his extensive lecturing and surgery in more than 20 countries, his leadership of the ophthalmology department at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute and his founding of the Ögonklinik, now Sweden’s largest private eye clinic. “He has educated a generation of Swedish cataract surgeons and led the efforts to adopt phaco emulsification, intraocular lens implantation and corneal refractive surgery in his home country.”

Accepting the honor, Dr Philipson expressed his gratitude for the opportunities he had to improve ocular surgery and those who supported his efforts. “I am very fortunate to be of the group to have experienced the evolution of cataract and refractive surgery from intracapsular surgery to the modern very advanced surgery. It’s been very fascinating. This shift of surgical technique and the improvement of outcome have been made possible by the excellent teaching facilities that ASCRS and ESCRS have provided to us.”

Noting that he has attended almost all ESCRS and many ASCRS programs over the years, Dr Philipson thanked several American colleagues with whom he has studied and worked over the years, and whose ideas he shared in Europe. “Bob Sinskey was really my first mentor, and I visited him many, many times. Howard Fine was a fantastic teacher, and I had the possibility to work with and learn from Doug Koch, Steve Obstbaum and Dick Lindstrom. Jack Holladay and Jay McDonald, and I am very sorry we miss David Apple and Charlie Kelman. They taught us a lot.”

TEACHING IS EVERYTHING

Jack Holladay inducted into ASCRS Ophthalmology Hall of Fame in emotional ceremony

By Howard Larkin in Chicago

Internationally known for his pioneering work in optics, including brightness acuity tester for assessing the impact of glare on vision and widely used IOL power calculation formulae, Jack T Holladay MD MSEE FACS, was inducted into ASCRS’ Ophthalmology Hall of Fame. In an emotional address to the opening session of the ASCRS Symposium, Dr Holladay thanked colleagues for their support following high-risk aortic surgery in 2010, and cited his teaching experiences as among the most rewarding of his life.

Dr Holladay has contributed immensely to improving the understanding of optics in ophthalmology, including glare testing, interpretation of corneal topography and the nature of astigmatism, said Douglas Koch MD, Houston, US. His IOL consultant power calculation software that takes into account factors such as corneal transplants and refractive surgery have improved vision outcomes for cataract patients around the world.

Dr Holladay spoke from the perspective of one who came close to death. His operation to correct an aortic aneurysm involved lowering his body temperature enough for him to survive cutting off blood flow to his brain for about 20 minutes during the procedure, followed by an eight-day coma, he said.

“I had a one in 10,000 chance of survival. The intensive cardiologist just happened to be walking down the hall and the only surgeon in Houston who could do the procedure was doing heart surgery upstairs,” said Dr Holladay. Though he is still a Clinical Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, he no longer sees patients. Holding back tears, he haltingly recounted the support he received from his family during his eight-day coma, and the hundreds of messages from colleagues and students around the world.

“After 37 years in ophthalmology I had to retire because I wasn’t quite the same after the operation. Looking back, the things I think about are not the patents, not the papers, none of those things, really. It’s the teaching,” Dr Holladay said. In 40 years of teaching, as an engineer before he completed his medical training and as a physician, Dr Holladay estimates he has taught more than 10,000 ophthalmologists in optics.

Dr Holladay added: “I wanted to create for them the same excitement I had about the optics of the eye that is such a miracle; get them to understand this miraculous device that allows us to interact with the world. Every day we perform a miracle on patients by restoring their vision. Within a few hours they can go from complete blindness to vision that is almost perfect. Most important, I am grateful for all the friends I have around the world in ophthalmology. I say to you thank you, thank you so much.”

Embracing Dr Holladay at the podium, ASCRS Foundation Chair Richard Lindstrom MD, Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, shared the warm feelings Dr Holladay expressed. “He is a friend, colleague and a true giant in the field. His tenacity, commitment and sheer brilliance have given us some of the greatest advances in all of ophthalmology.”