Napoleon Bonaparte, the first emperor of France, is one of the most successful and controversial military leaders in human history. He bestowed medals, awards and titles generously to encourage his soldiers and heighten morale, creating the first modern order of merit, the Legion of Honor.   

 Following Napoleon’s lead, I want to praise the exceptionally talented Generals behind Retina Specialist. Our standing columns provide targeted insights into the many facets of being a retina specialist. Philip Rosenfeld, MD, PhD, coordinates our “Medical Retina Fellows Forum,” providing insights from recent clinical observations and trials. See page 13 for his succinct summary of the active trials moving combination therapy for wet AMD into the clinic.

In “Retina Rounds,” Lisa Olmos, MD, delivers a mystery case or management dilemma certain to hone your clinical skills. Paul Hahn, MD, unwraps “Surgical Pearls” with linked videos. Having difficulty lifting the hyaloid? See page 20 for his latest recommendations.

Emmett Cunningham MD, in “Clinical Trial Closeup,” explores pertinent clinical trials, this time focusing on suprachoroidal steroid delivery. Kirk Mack helps maximize your coding and avoid audit red flags. Being in the middle of an audit with my group, I can promise you they are painful and incredibly resource-consuming. Let Kirk help keep you on track.  

Efrem Mandelcorn, MD, leads the newest addition to our standing columns, “North of the Border,” from Toronto, delivering an ex-United States perspective.

This quarterly edition is dedicated to ocular imaging. In “Innovation Insight” on page 51, David Huang, MD, PhD, one of the co-inventors of optical coherence tomography, gives his perspectives on where OCT has been and where it’s going. Caroline Baumal, MD, and Talisa de Carlo, MD, describe the virtues of OCT angiography (page 22), and Netan Choudhry, MD, modifies his spectral-domain OCT machine to capture peripheral retinal pathologies as you have never seen them (page 30).

Walking the halls of the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting reminds me of Napoleon’s approach. Some of our colleagues appear to have literally dozens of ribbons and pins dangling from their name tags. It’s not easy to get the ribbons on straight with just the right length flapping below. How many ribbons will you be wearing at the AAO?