Dear Colleagues,

We are breaking a new ground by bringing the surgical symposiums of TOA together as a three-day meeting, creating the opportunity to present and follow new surgical techniques in all ophthalmic branches. This event will be called as  “TOA Live Surgery Symposium ”.

Until this year, there had been live or video taped surgery meetings about cataract and refraction every year in February, glaucoma in December, and vitreoretinal surgery in May every other year. In addition, various surgery symposiums had been held occasionally in the fields of cornea, oculoplastics and strabismus.  Merging all these meeting as a three-day symposium, is hoped to help our aim to increase the efficacy of TOA meetings.

The symposium will be held in Bomonti Hilton Congress Center in Istanbul between Friday, 16th June and Sunday, 18th June. In total, 12 hours of live surgery sessions will be held in the hospital of Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty in the fields of cataract, glaucoma, and vitreoretinal surgeries and this will be presented to the attendees in the meeting rooms via satellite. In other sessions of the 3-day symposium, surgical videos in other branches of ophthalmology will be introduced as well as discussions and panels.

The chairmans and the executive committees of TOA units have been working harmoniously under the coordination of Osman Şevki Arslan and Necdet Cinhüseyinoğlu in order to organize a symposium that would be rewarding and beneficial to attend. I express my gratitude towards the Cerrahpaşa Hospital administrators and the director of the ophthalmology department,  who opened their hospital for the live surgery sessions. I also would like to thank the sponsoring companies for their close collaboration with the meeting commitee.

On behalf of TOA Administrative Board, I invite and welcome you to “TOA Live Surgery Symposium”.

Reha Ersöz
President of Turkish Ophthalmology Association