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Editorial IGR 1-3
Dear Reader,
We are now in the new Millennium and does it feel any different? No, it does not - we continue to do what we always did - but at the same time it does. The speeding up of technology allows us to create machines that, by the year 2020, will have the same capacity as the human brain: 20 million billion neural connection calculations per second. Here we are then, masters of the universe (or so we would like to think) and soon a machine will be faster than we are in making all sorts of decisions, including those concerning the management of glaucoma. So let us enjoy our last few years of mastership, and use our DNA-based options to rule the world, feeling great as we do so. We still have a small part of the new Millennium left and then the party is over. Machines will outsmart us.
In this third issue of IGR, dealing with the final months of the last Millennium, we have introduced a new concept: EBA, short for Evidence Based Advertising. This hypermodern way of advertising links up the need of the advertiser to recommend his product and the need of the reader to find appropriate evidence to substantiate the claims of the Ad. So far, two companies have been brave enough, and certain enough of their product, to place an EBA in IGR: Heidelberg Engineering and Interzeag International. Our compliments to both of them. "Chapeau" as they say in France, hats off to them! A testimony to quality. Interzeag starts with the 25th anniversary of the Octopus and a reproduction of a classical Goldman paper. The next issue will contain the "evidence" part.
Readers can now also log into the new Website for IGR: www.glaucom.com. Among other things the Website will contain an introduction to IGR, its editors, the executive committees and secretariats of the societies, news flashes, Editor's Selection, comments, questions, and more.
There are reports on the meeting of the Asia-Oceanic Glaucoma Society (expert edition), glaucoma at the American Academy of Ophthalmology Meeting (expert and practice edition), glaucoma in Australia (expert edition) and from the Millennium meeting in Hong Kong sponsored by Pharmacia Corporation (expert and practice edition). Normal pressure glaucoma -is this the right terminology?- will be seen in a new perspective.
Furthermore, readers can enjoy several (non-gonioscopic) points of view on angle closure glaucoma and also on the relationship between this rather frequent disease and sex. The Russian literature will surprise us with its independent vision on glaucoma. Two separate papers elucidate on the costs of eyedrops: see the Editor's Selection.
The most important section of IGR is supplied by Yoshi Kitazawa and, apart from costing aspects, covers the relationship between visual function and ganglion cell loss, criteria for progression, growth-factor and fibrosis inhibition, beta blockers and progression, etc. A true gem of information.
Some correspondence in the Journal of Glaucoma deals with another matter of terminology: 'peri'- or 'para'-papillary atrophy. The corresponding author, McLeod, cleverly points out that 'peri' covers our needs quite satisfactorily: meaning both 'around' and 'to the side of'. So, let us stick to PERI-papillary atrophy.
Also please note the 5IGRQ section in the Editor's Selection. Five questions are asked to the author and an other expert on a particular article discussed the Editor's Selection. This time it is Einar Stefansson and Jack Cioffi.
We have added the Attention paragraph (expert edition). This invites readers to pay particular attention to some papers not covered in the Editor's Selection, but worth pondering over.
May your reading be enjoyable.
Erik Greve
