This year's Aegean Cornea Conference to celebrate 20th Anniversary of LASIK Surgery

The Institute of Vision and Optics (IVO) at the University of Crete announced today that this year’s Aegean Cornea Conference will celebrate the 20^th Anniversary of LASIK surgery. The biennial event will feature world leaders in cornea, cataract and refractive surgery as well as presentations on medical and scientific breakthroughs in the field.

“This European breakthrough in optic surgery has paved the way for many countless other procedures and developments.”

Professor Ioannis Pallikaris M.D., founder of the IVO, widely regarded as the “father” of LASIK surgery and Chief Medical Advisor to Presbia, will co-host the event with Dr. Perry S. Binder, ophthalmologist and founder of the Gordon Binder Vision Institute in San Diego, CA, and Dr. Marguerite McDonald, who serves as a clinical professor of ophthalmology at both NYU School of Medicine and Tulane University Health Sciences Center.

“We are very excited to celebrate this milestone for LASIK surgery in its birthplace, Crete, with some of the brightest practitioners in the field of ophthalmology,” said Prof. Pallikaris. “This European breakthrough in optic surgery has paved the way for many countless other procedures and developments.”

Since its inception in 1992, the Aegean Cornea Conference has coincided with the growth of surgical techniques such as LASIK, and now includes thousands of attendees at which significant scientific research has been presented for worldwide education of related medical practitioners and scholars as well as those of commercial interests.

Presentations and discussion at the conference will focus on the most recent developments, both clinical and technical, in the fields of medical cornea and refractive surgery. Eight-minute papers, followed by five-minute discussions, will be presented in targeted sessions. Submissions are invited on the following topics, and must be received no later than May 30, 2010:

• Vision quality and refractive surgery
• Non-laser refractive surgery
• Surface ablation
• Visual optics and biomechanics
• Latest LASIK advancements
• Presbyopia
• Corneal external diseases
• Alloplastic material in refractive surgery
• Controversies in refractive surgery
• New treatments for kerotoconus
• Femtosecond laser technologies

The conference is sponsored in part by the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS), the leading professional society of European refractive surgeons, which designated 2010 as The Year of LASIK. It will be held in Heraklion, Crete from July 9-11, 2010 at the Terra Maris Hotel Conference Center. In addition to ESCRS, several other medical societies will sponsor symposia at the conference. They include the Asia-Pacific Association of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (APACRS), the European Association for Vision and Eye Research (EVER), the Indian Academy for Advance in Ophthalmology, the International Society of Refractive Surgery (ISRS) and the Middle East African Council of Ophthalmology (MEACO).

This year’s conference also has an expanded roster of corporate sponsors, including Abbot Medical Optics Inc. and Presbia N.V., a leader in the development and marketing of a surgical solution for presbyopia through the development of its Flexivue™ Micro-Lens—a new and innovative implanted corneal lens that eliminates the need for reading glasses. This new technology utilizes the same laser technology as in LASIK to create a pocket in the cornea which allows for its lens to be implanted.