Professor Michael H. Foerster: update of the option for treatment of intraocular tumors
Expert introduction
Being more than 19 years head of the Eye Clinic, Charité-Campus Benjamin Franklin, Prof. Dr. Michael Foerster (Figure 1) is a leading expert in the field of eye tumors in the ocular fundus. These tumors are the result of an extremely malicious disease, which not only menace the ability to see, but also but a patient in mortal danger. Patients with eye tumors are being treated with proton beams since June 1998 by the Universitätsklinikum Benjamin Franklin of the Freie Universität Berlin (now: Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin) together with the Hahn-Meitner-Institut (now: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie) in Berlin.
Editor’s note
The editor would like to express appreciation to Professor Michael H. Foerster at Campus Benjamin Franklin for bringing us with such an excellent interview. In this interview, Professor Foerster mainly shared his opinions about the current clinical situation and the options for treatment of intraocular tumors.
When mentioned the most impressive advance in the treatment of intraocular tumors in these two decades, Professor Foerster said: “Concerning retinoblastoma, we have changed in methods and performed intravitreal therapy which was forbidden 50 years ago. It has changed completely by applying intravitreal therapy. We can nowadays treat almost all eye tumors and even the tumors which until now have been treated with removing the eye.”
Besides, Professor Foerster shared with us the reason he chose to become an ophthalmologist. “I didn’t want to be an ophthalmologist at the very beginning. I wanted to be a country doctor when I was in medical school. Then I came across some nice people who brought me to ophthalmology. So, it’s basically from one generation to the next generation. You have persons who transform their knowledge of discipline and that’s why I am trying to convince lots of young doctors to become ophthalmologists today.” For more detail of the interview, please refer to the following video (Figure 2).
Interview questions
- Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interest?
- What are the risk factors that causing intraocular tumors to human?
- What do you think are the most impressive advance in the treatment of intraocular tumors in these two decades?
- How is current clinical situation of the treatment for intraocular tumors?
- Would you like to share the latest exploration in the area of intraocular tumors in your lab?
- What has made you become an ophthalmologist?
- What is the biggest difference between an ophthalmologist and doctors in other field in medicine?
Acknowledgments
On behalf of the editorial office of Annals of Eye Science, the author would like to extend her gratitude to Professor Michael Foerster for sharing his perspectives and Mrs. Christy Wang for her coordination for this interview.
Funding: None.
Footnote
Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office for the series "Meet the Professor" published in Annals of Eye Science. The article did not undergo external peer review.
Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/aes.2017.08.02). The series “Meet the Professor” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. Helen X. Seliman and Elaine Xu report that they are full-time employees of AME publishing company (publisher of the journal). The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
References
- Seliman HX, Xu E. Professor Michael H. Foerster: update of the option for treatment of intraocular tumors. Asvide 2017;4:324. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1636
(Science Editors: Helen X. Seliman, Elaine Xu, AES, aes@amegroups.com)
Cite this article as: Seliman HX, Xu E. Professor Michael H. Foerster: update of the option for treatment of intraocular tumors. AME Med J 2017;2:60.
