As one year dies and another dawns, scores of people resolve to change themselves for the better. Health clubs and weight loss programs swell with goal-oriented individuals. Packs of cigarettes are locked in drawers. Bottles of vitamins and containers of dental floss fly off the shelves at supermarkets and into medicine cabinets. Books are carefully placed on nightstands. Brochures and Internet sites on personal organization, matchmaking, and skydiving are consulted. This is the year to read The Iliad, to kick that bad habit, to call loved ones more often, to achieve personal fulfillment, to try something new.
We at Glaucoma Today have decided to embrace the zeal that heralds the new year. Rather than the usual lineup of articles, this edition contains a series focused on glaucoma surgery. The genesis of this offering was Chief Medical Editor Richard Lewis' proposal that we hold our first roundtable discussion and turn that conversation into an article. We scheduled a dinner during the recent AAO annual meeting and invited several glaucoma specialists to share their thoughts on the surgical management of the disease. The conversation was animated and extensive. Its core appears in “Glaucoma Surgery: Today and Tomorrow.”
There were many more surgical topics to cover, however. We therefore asked seven respected ophthalmologists to address a variety of subjects, including releasable sutures and needling blebs. Those articles compose the remainder of GToday's unique series.
Our usual broad array of columns will return in the March/April 2007 edition, and a couple of them appear in this issue. In addition to a fresh installment of “Surgical Rounds From the Hamilton Glaucoma Center” that deals with a flat anterior chamber after phacotrabeculectomy, this edition of GToday contains an article by Robert Ritch, MD, about research on bioengineered implants to improve the function of blebs.
Please let Rick and me know how you enjoy this special issue of GToday. We will need little goading to try the format again with other areas of focus.
