Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is a great pleasure and honor for us to welcome you in İstanbul, Türkiye and host the 44th Annual Congress of the European Strabismological Association (ESA) and AAPOS and Turkish Ophthalmological Association Joint Meeting. Istanbul is a very special place to have this meeting as it is at meeting point of two continents, forming a bridge between east and west. The great cultural heritage of the city will embrace you as well as the modern and youthful facilities.

“Pediatric Ophthalmology Perspective” will give the opportunity of updating your knowledge and also meeting the experts. The scientific programme of 44th ESA congress will be at the highest level as the previous ones and all aspects of childhood and adulthood strabismus will be covered by the experienced colleagues and experts from all over the world.

The congress will be in Hilton Bosphorus Congress Center in the center of city. Connected to the congress center Hilton Hotel that is one of the iconic buildings of İstanbul will be a perfect spot tos tay in İstanbul. Around this area there are many hotels with a wide range of budget. Istanbul has high number of restaurants that will give you th eopportunity of tasting local Turkish cuisine as well as international. Around the congress center Istanbul has many daily connections to European cities and Turkish Airlines is one of the airlines with highest number of connections and direct flights all over the world. You can find a hotel easily

Huban Atilla, MD
President of Turkish Ophthalmological Association

Dear friends, colleagues, and strabismus enthusiasts,

it is my great pleasure to invite you all to attend the 44th Annual Congress of the European Strabismological Association held in Istanbul, Türkiye from 12th - 14th June 2025. After the spectacular ESA Meeting in Izmir 2004 and ISA Meeting in Istanbul 2010 we return to Turkiye to enjoy Turkish hospitality.

The Scientific Programme will be organised jointly with AAPOS – as we did very successfully 2017 in Porto – and the Turkish Ophthalmological Society. A big thank you to Huban Atilla, Şule Ziylan and Seyhan Özkan who will be the local organizers.

We will have our traditional 2½ day ESA program including our usual favourite sessions such as Round Table, Orthoptic Symposium, Early Morning Surgery Course, and our ever-popular John Lee rapid fire Poster session and “A Case I have learnt from…”. The 7th pre-meeting Strabismus workshop “What you always wanted to ask about strabismus ..." invites especially beginners in strabismology and people who start to come to ESA meetings. The Toulouse workshop 2024 was very interactive, instructive, and good fun for presenters and participants as well.

Last and by no means least, we invite you to submit abstracts of your own work. Presenting and discussing your research as talk or poster will form a major part of the programme.

For the first time there will be an extra day of Paediatric Ophthalmology sessions organized by AAPOS and the Turkish society. Because ESA by-laws clearly state that we promote strabismology in all its aspects - but not paediatric ophthalmology in general - there must be a separate registration for this extra day on Wednesday 11th June. I strongly recommend joining.

On Wednesday we will also host the EBO Subspeciality exam Strabismus and Paediatric Ophthalmologie together with the EPOS (European Paediatric Ophthalmological Society). More informations can be found at .www.ebo-online.org

Transport links to Istanbul are excellent. So again, as in Toulouse we expect participants from countries all over the world.

As ESA President it is my immense pleasure to meet you all at the congress in the vibrant city of Istanbul.

Oliver Ehrt, MD
President of European Strabismological Association