The World Glaucoma Congress recently held in Paris, France, played host to over 3000 global attendees, which was an increase of nearly 20% from the previous event held in 2009. As a result of the success of the event, we spoke with some of the key people involved in the organization to find out what highlights, trends and new features helped with this popularity and what we can expect in the future.

2011 highlights

Dr Shlomo Melamed, one of the co-chairs of the WGC 2011 Programme Committee and member of the WGC 2011 Organizing Committee, revealed his four major highlights of the 2011 event to be the Glaucoma Surgery Day, Grand Rounds, a special session on the "Best 5 contributions to Glaucoma" and the sessions on imaging and diagnostics.

Glaucoma Surgery Day: This new feature to the 2011 congress took place on Friday 1 July during which attendees were able to enjoy a programme devoted to glaucoma surgery that was chaired by Dr Franz Grehn (Chairman of the University Eye Hospital Wuerzburg, Germany) and Dr Robert Weinreb (University of California, San Diego, USA). "The Glaucoma Surgery Day was devoted to ALL aspects of glaucoma surgery, including indications, novel surgical methodologies and guides of best practices," said Dr Melamed.

Grand Rounds: These clinical cases, presented over 3–4 minutes, were chosen by the scientific committee as original, innovative, interesting and challenging and offered an exciting opportunity to ophthalmologists to present their subject matter to a panel of global experts. Chairing these Grand Rounds were Dr Christophe Baudouin (Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital, Paris, France) and Dr David Epstein (Duke University Medical Center, Department of Ophthalmology, North Carolina, USA). Dr Melamed added, "A panel of experts from all over the world discussed and analused clinical cases chosen by the scientfic committee and presented by young ophthalmologists."

Sessions: From Wednesday to Saturday there were many sessions taking place, including some special sessions. Dr Melamed said, "One of my highlights was the Glaucoma Debate session on 'hot topics (has glaucoma management improved in the last ten years?)'." This session took place on Thursday afternoon and was chaired by Drs Kuldev Singh (Stanford University School of Medicine), Prin Rojanapongpun (Chulalongkorn University) and Marco Nardi (University of Pisa). It explored various perspectives on the current and future clinical management of glaucoma in a debate format. "Additionally, we had a variety of sessions on new advances in imaging and diagnostic tools that were popular," he added.

In addition to all of these highlights there was also a successful exhibition and poster sessions for attendees to enjoy. There were 30 booths on the exhibition floor that were all showcasing the latest innovations in the field of glaucoma, including Aeon Astron, showcasing the ologen Collagen Matrix, EyeTechCare, featuring a miniturized high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) device for glaucoma treatment, and Anteis, revealing clinical data on the Healaflow technology, among many others. A further opportunity for attendees to learn about the new products on offer was available through company symposia held during Thursday and Friday. Also, there were 740 posters displayed in total that covered the full spectrum of glaucoma from medication to surgical options and general aspects of the disease to experimental glaucoma in animal models.