By the beautiful Mediterranean beaches of the Portuguese Riviera and under blue sunny skies, the annual ECVO Congress was held in the city of Estoril, steps away from the Estoril casino, which has inspired Ian Fleming for his first James Bond novel, “Casino Royale”.

Yet, another ECVO record was broken this year with the attendance of 430 delegates from 38 countries, all gathered to enjoy the scientific program focusing on vision and blindness. Click here for a link to the 2017 ECVO abstracts on the Veterinary Ophthalmology Journal website. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1463-5224/homepage/ecvo_meeting_abstracts.htm). The Continuing Education and Masterclass days also focused on the same theme and were given by the outstanding guest speakers, Drs. Paul Miller, Jacques Penderis, Christine Heinrich, Richard McMullen, and Simon Petersen-Jones. 
On Saturday, a state-of-the-Art lecture was given by the world-renowned Prof. Dr. 
Eberhard Zrenner, who enlightened us with his captivating review of present approaches to prevent blindness or restitute vision in retinal degeneration. 

The social events provided an excellent opportunity to meet old and new friends, and attracted a record-breaking number of participants. A total of 315 people attended the Welcome Reception, and 230 people enjoyed the Conference Gala Dinner.



NEW ECVO DIPLOMATES


The ECVO had the pleasure of welcoming 5 new Diplomates who passed the 2017 Board examination. The 5 new Diplomates are: 

• Benjamin Thomas BLACKLOCK 
• Jens FRITSCHE
• Rose LINN-PEARL
• Goedele STORMS
• Roser TETAS PONT



CONFERENCE AWARDS

The ECVO Board decided to award the three best oral presentations in 2017. In recent years one price had been given to residents exclusively, this year all oral presentations were considered. Similarly, prizes for posters were increased from 1 to 2 poster prizes, where all presented posters were taken into consideration.
Awards for best podium and poster presentations were given at the end of the conference.

The two winners of the awards for best poster presentations are:

• Alessandro CIRLA (first place, 350 Euro): ‘Corneal mineralization as a presenting sign of primary hyper parathyroidism due to a parathyroid adenoma’.
• Elena FENOLLOSA-ROMERO (second place, 250 Euro): ‘Retrobulbar steatitis and meningitis/empyema secondary to right otitis media and interna in a cat’.

The three winners of the awards for best oral presentations are:

• Cécile BRIFFOD (first place, 500 Euro): ‘Stability of canine serum eye drops at different storage concentrations’.
• Eva M. ABARCA (second place, 400 Euro): ‘Subconjunctival Voriconazole thermogel as a sustained-delivery system to treat keratomycosis in horses’. 
• Gil BEN-SHLOMO (third place, 300 Euro): ‘Interleukin-6 expression in a ovel ex-vivo model of equine corneal wound healing’. 


For further information on previous and future ECVO Congresses please follow this link (http://ecvo.org/meetings/congresses) and visit our website regularly for updates.



Gil Ben-Shlomo, ECVO Communication Committee