EURETINA Video Competition prizes presented

David R Chow, Canada, received second prize for “Autologous lens capsular graft for persistent macular hole” The winners of this year’s EURETINA Video Competition demonstrate how difficult cases can lead to surgical innovations. First prize in the competition went to Fernando González del Valle, Spain, for “A fistful of intraocular pellets”, the video describes the surgery undertaken and results achieved in two cases where shot-gun pellets became lodged inside patients’ eyes. The first patient was a 35-year old man with a single pellet in his left eye. In this complicated case, Dr González del Valle performed an urgent vitreoretinal procedure to close the perforation, repair the herniation of the iris and remove the foreign object. In a second procedure he repaired a postoperative retinal detachment, and in a third procedure he performed phacoemulsification and implanted an intraocular lens. His injured eye achieved a postoperative visual acuity of 20/100. The second case was a 17-year-old male who had a pellet in each eye. Both eyes underwent vitrectomy and removal of the pellet, in addition to scleral-buckling and ILM peeling. The patient’s right eye also had persistent hypotony and underwent placement of a tenon plug at the site of perforation. Postoperatively, the patient’s visual acuity was 20/25 in his right eye and 20/100 in his left eye. David R Chow, Canada, received second prize for “Autologous lens capsular graft for persistent macular hole”, in which he presented his initial experiences using anterior and posterior lens capsular grafts for macular holes (MH) that failed to close despite standard-of-care surgical interventions. In his first case, he used autologous anterior lens capsule tissue – obtained through a simultaneous cataract procedure – to graft the persistent macular hole. He noted that the tissue was very elastic and easily manipulated into place on the macular hole. However, the macular hole remained open. In his second case, he used a posterior capsule graft in a pseudophakic patient with persistent MH secondary to diabetic maculopathy. The posterior capsule tissue was much stiffer and could only be placed in position after air-fluid exchange. Dr Chow noted that although the outcomes were not successful in these cases, the capsular graft approach to persistent MH is promising and has had a high success rate in larger patient series reported in the literature. Rajeev Muni, Canada, took third prize for “Novel technique to remove retained subfoveal perfluorocarbon liquid Perfluoro-N-octane (PFO)”. The presentation described the case of a 17-year-old patient who had undergone a PFO-assisted vitrectomy surgery for a giant retinal tear. Retained PFO in the subfoveal space left the patient with a visual acuity of 20/100.