As Kris Kringle prepares for his tour around the globe on December 25th, so does CRST Europe. The difference is that our global tour is a little bit smaller—the size of an eye—and it doesn’t involve gift-giving or eating too many cookies. Instead, our journey highlights some of ophthalmology’s major breakthroughs of 2012 in the areas of glaucoma, retina, ocular pathologies, and, of course, cataract and refractive surgery.

For this Tour Around the Globe 2012 issue, I invited the chief medical editors of CRST Europe and its sister publications— Glaucoma Today, Retina Today, Advanced Ocular Care, and Cataract & Refractive Surgery Today US—to comment on the major topics, trends, and breakthroughs in their respective spaces in the globe. The result is a compilation of articles that not only reveals the eye-related hot topics of the year and helps ophthalmic practitioners stay connected to their peers across specialties, but also acts as a roadmap for surgeons looking to invest in new technologies or transition to cutting-edge surgical and patient-management techniques.

Arthur B. Cummings, MB ChB, FCS(SA), MMed (Ophth), FRCS(Edin), Associate Chief Medical Editor of CRST Europe, kicks off the cover focus with an in-depth overview of femtosecond laser systems for cataract surgery and excimer and femtosecond laser systems for refractive surgery. In his article, representatives of 11 companies supply readers with brief updates on the technologies and software upgrades that were made available in 2012. What is unique about Arthur’s article is that he also asked 11 surgeons to comment on their use of these technologies. This collaborative effort between the industry and eye care practitioners conveys just how far ophthalmology has come over the years. As many contributors in this article say, 2013 looks just as bright as 2012.

Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD; and Stephen G. Slade, MD, Co-Chief Medical Editors of CRST US, also comment on the trends and breakthroughs in cataract and refractive surgery. They concentrate specifically on what they felt were the best clinical pearls, research or review articles or presentations, software, and technology of 2012. Representing Retina Today, Associate Editor Callan Navitsky assembled a listing of the major newsworthy events of 2012, including US Food and Drug Administration approvals and milestone clinical trials in retinal surgery.

Providing an overview of where glaucoma surgery was headed in 2012, Chief Medical Editor of Glaucoma Today, Steven D. Vold, MD, explains the criteria of microinvasive glaucoma surgery, a new classification of procedures that includes trabecular microbypass microstents, suprachoroidal microstents, and ab interno procedures using a subconjunctival surgical approach. Moving on to ocular pathologies, William B. Trattler, MD, Co-Chief Medical Editor of Advanced Ocular Care, lists several ocular surface treatments that he feels deserve recognition as outstanding products of 2012. Lastly, Advanced Ocular Care Co-Chief Medical Editor Steven J. Dell, MD, uncovers what he considers to be the strongest force on ophthalmology in 2012 and beyond in his article The Demographic Tide.

I would also like to call attention to CRST Europe’s new online exclusive content, which is extended coverage of an article or articles that is not available in the print edition. If an article has bonus materials that are available online only, it will be designated with a medallion in the print version and available on our website (crstodayeurope.com) and in the iPad edition of CRST Europe, which is an Apple Newstand publication that can be found and installed on the iPad by searching the term cataract and refractive in the iPad App Store. This month, we feature our first online exclusive article, Management Modalities for Keratoconus, by Mazen M. Sinjab, MD, PhD.

I hope you enjoy our Tour Around the Globe 2012 and use it as a resource for your practice in the coming year. As always, CRST Europe will continue to bring you timely coverage of all ophthalmic topics, from our roots in cataract and refractive surgery to other branches of ophthalmic care, including glaucoma, retina, and ocular pathologies.