ESCRS London 2026: What Blue Fin Vision® Did In The Room, And What Came Back To Harley Street
- Posted
- Medically Reviewed by: Mr Mfazo Hove, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon
- Author: Mr Mfazo Hove
- Published: September 15, 2026
- Last Updated: September 15, 2026
TL;DR: At ESCRS London 2026, I represented Blue Fin Vision® as a moderator, cited practitioner, industry communicator and host to 22 visiting Chinese cataract and refractive surgeons. The week brought together lens comparison, patient experience, clinical audit and international exchange, closing a professional loop that began in China in April.
This September, London hosted the 44th Congress of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons. In a sense the congress came home: this is the city where Sir Harold Ridley implanted the first intraocular lens,¹ ² and the modern conversation about lens surgery returned to it with some force.
Blue Fin Vision® was not in the audience only.
Across the congress week I worked in four roles, only three of them on the ExCeL floor: moderator of the ZEISS IOL comparison session, a practice cited in the Ridley Medal Lecture, industry communicator through the ZEISS film Through My Own Eyes and an interview with Ophthalmology Times Europe, and host, when 22 senior Chinese cataract and refractive surgeons left the congress floor for an evening with the practice.
This post is a participation record, not a highlights reel. Each role is named, dated and evidenced. And the week closed a loop that opened in China in April.
The Congress In One Frame
The 44th ESCRS ran from 11 to 15 September 2026 at ExCeL London. It opened with the Ridley Medal Lecture, delivered this year by Professor Oliver Findl under the title The Flow of Cataract Surgery.
The scientific spine of the week was consistent: intraocular lens selection, surgical workflow, and the patient’s experience of surgery, examined through comparison rather than catalogue.
The question underneath most sessions was not which lens is newest, but how a surgeon should judge between them, and what the patient feels while that judgement is carried out. Those happen to be the two questions Blue Fin Vision® is built around, which is why the week read less like a conference visit and more like a series of appointments.
Between sessions at ExCeL: congress weeks are where colleagues catch up, including an ophthalmologist I trained with, now based in Hong Kong. September 2026.
Four Roles, One Week
- Moderator: ZEISS stand C.100, Be Your Own Judge, Sunday 13 September, 15:00–16:00.
- Practice Cited: Ridley Medal Lecture 2026.
- Communicator: Ophthalmology Times Europe interview and ZEISS Through My Own Eyes.
- Host: 22A Harley Street and Weymouth Street Hospital, 12 September.
Disclosure: I am a ZEISS Key Opinion Leader. The Sunday session and the Through My Own Eyes film were ZEISS programmes.
Moderator: Be Your Own Judge
On the Sunday afternoon I moderated Be Your Own Judge: Why IOL Comparisons Matter at the ZEISS stand.
The panel, as published by ZEISS:
- Dr Jiwon Jeong, Fatima Eye Clinic, South Korea.
- Dr Jascha Wendelstein, IROC, Switzerland.
- Mr James Myerscough, Southend, UK.
- Professor Haike Guo, Shanghai Heping Eye Hospital, China.
- Dr Javier Coloma, Clínica Baviera, Spain.
With me in the moderator’s chair for Blue Fin Vision®.
Moderator: the session billing as published by ZEISS. Be Your Own Judge, South Event Hall Booth C.100, Sunday 13 September 2026, 15:00–16:00.
Moderator: opening Be Your Own Judge: Why IOL Comparisons Matter at the ZEISS stand, ExCeL London, 13 September 2026.
The premise of the session matters more than the session. Comparison is a clinical method, not a marketing heat. Put competing optics side by side, on their measured behaviour, and the question stops being which lens wins and becomes which lens serves which eye. Lens choice is a system: biometry, counselling, surgical volume and audit, working together. No podium decides it.
Inside a consultant-led UK practice, be your own judge is not an invitation to preference. It means the surgeon who counsels you has implanted the competing designs in meaningful numbers, audits the outcomes, and can tell you where each optic earns its place and where it does not.
A lens does not win in the abstract; it succeeds, or fails, in a particular eye attached to particular visual demands. The judgement is the product. That is what patients are actually choosing when they choose a surgeon rather than a lens.
Moderator: the published panel at stand C.100 before the session, 13 September 2026.
Moderator: Dr Jascha Wendelstein (IROC, Switzerland) presenting during the IOL comparison session, 13 September 2026.
Panels also build things that outlast them. I met Dr Jiwon Jeong across the moderator’s table on the Sunday; by the evening we were socialising together, and there are now plans for me to visit Korea. It is the same pattern that carried the China relationship: a professional stage first, then a working friendship, then travel in both directions.
Moderator, continued: with Dr Jiwon Jeong after the congress day. From moderating together to plans for a Korea visit. September 2026.
Practice Cited: The Ridley Medal Lecture
The Ridley Medal Lecture is the congress’s opening statement, and Professor Findl used it to examine the flow of cataract surgery: how a theatre runs when every step, human and technical, is deliberate. In the section on the patient in theatre, my name and photograph appeared on one of his slides, for a simple practice: using the surgeon’s own voice as an anchor for an anxious patient under local anaesthetic.
Two attributions matter here. The idea is not originally mine; I learned it from Sanjog Sandhu, and it is an instrument I keep within reach rather than a routine I run in every case.
And the citation was not downstream of a press release. Professor Findl had watched me operate before he built the slide. Ideas travel in this field the way they should: from one theatre to another, observed, tested, then taught. Being used as practice in a medal lecture is worth more than being décor in one.
Practice cited: Professor Oliver Findl opens the Ridley Medal Lecture 2026, The Flow of Cataract Surgery, ExCeL London, September 2026.
Practice cited: the patient-in-theatre slide from the Ridley Medal Lecture, with Mr Hove’s photograph beside the surgeon’s-voice point, September 2026.
Communicator: Through My Own Eyes
During the congress, Ophthalmology Times Europe interviewed me about Through My Own Eyes, the ZEISS film that follows me as a patient of the same AT LISA platform I implant: my own refractive lens surgery, recorded from the other side of the microscope. The film has already been recognised with a Telly Award and an AVA Platinum, and both were on the ZEISS stand in London.
I will not retell the film here. Its argument fits in one line, and it is the line this practice runs on: I would not recommend to a patient what I would not choose for my own eyes.
Communicator: Through My Own Eyes on the ZEISS stand, with the campaign’s Telly Award and AVA Platinum, September 2026.
Communicator: with ZEISS colleagues and the campaign awards at the stand, September 2026.
Communicator: interviewed at the ZEISS stand during the congress, September 2026.
Host: 22 Surgeons and a Working Tour of the Practice
The role that mattered most did not happen at ExCeL. On Saturday 12 September, 22 senior cataract and refractive surgeons from mainland China, drawn from high-volume centres across the country, left a live congress diary and came to Blue Fin Vision®. This was a clinic briefing and a working tour, not a photo stop: the diagnostic pathway, the consultation model, the audit system, room by room.
Host: the visiting delegation with Mr Hove outside Weymouth Street Hospital during the clinic tour, 12 September 2026.
Host: the clinic briefing at 22A Harley Street, 12 September 2026.
Reciprocity was formal on both sides: we received our guests to the same standard we hold for patients, with Bollinger and House of Dorchester; they presented a scroll of Along the River During the Qingming Festival; and dinner at 34 Mayfair carried a printed menu headed Hove Welcome Dinner.
Host: receiving the delegation’s formal scroll, Along the River During the Qingming Festival, 12 September 2026.
Host: receiving a gift from the Chinese delegation during the clinic visit, 12 September 2026.
The bridge was ZEISS China, whose team carried the relationship from spring to autumn. Because that is the actual story. In April I taught in Changsha, Shanghai and Hangzhou as visiting faculty. In September the traffic reversed: the community that hosted me on its stages spent an evening studying how a consultant-led London practice runs. That is what a loop closing looks like.
What This Week Means If You Are a Patient
Congress reports are written for surgeons. This one has a translation for the people we operate on.
- A surgeon asked to moderate a discussion about IOL comparison has to think beyond a single optic. If your surgeon moderates the debate between competing designs, you are not being fitted to a product; a product is being fitted to you.
- A surgeon whose work is used as an example in a medal lecture is being used as practice, not décor. The detail Professor Findl taught from our theatre concerns how surgery feels to the patient, which tells you what we optimise for.
- A surgeon who has had the lenses is not theorising neuroadaptation. When I describe adaptation, glare or reading range, I am reporting, not quoting.
- A clinic that high-volume Chinese centres visit during ESCRS is being treated as a counterpart in London, not a satellite of the congress.
Underneath all four sits the same evidence base: six consecutive years of published National Ophthalmology Database outcome data, with a posterior capsule rupture rate of around 0.2% against a national benchmark of roughly 0.69–0.79% for cataract surgery.³ ⁴
Where This Week Sits on the 2026 Map
A short chronology, because London was not a debut:
- April: ZEISS China faculty, teaching in Changsha, Shanghai and Hangzhou alongside the Horizon meeting.
- June: ZEISS EMEA faculty, Istanbul.
- August: the SOG meeting, Lausanne, 26–28 August.
- September: ESCRS London: moderator, cited practice, communicator and host.
The pattern across the year is one direction of travel becoming two. In spring, invitations to teach abroad. By autumn, delegations travelling to study the practice itself. The 2026 arc closed in London: a home congress in both senses.
The Loop, Not The Week
The floor will pack down. The diaries will revert to clinic. The measure of the week is not the week. It is that the conversation I joined in Changsha in April, about how a lens is chosen and how a patient is carried through surgery, is now running in both rooms at once: theirs and ours.
If you are considering cataract or lens replacement surgery, the place to start is not a lens brochure. Book a paid consultation at one of our consultant-led clinics across London, Hertfordshire and Essex, or read our published outcomes first, and judge us the way we ask our peers to judge: on the evidence.
Related Reading
References
- Ridley H. Intra-ocular acrylic lenses. Trans Ophthalmol Soc UK. 1951;71:617-21.
- Apple DJ, Sims J. Harold Ridley and the invention of the intraocular lens. Surv Ophthalmol. 1996;40(4):279-92.
- Royal College of Ophthalmologists. Seventh annual report of the National Cataract Audit [Internet]. London: Royal College of Ophthalmologists; 2024 [cited 2026 Sep 14]. Available from: National Ophthalmology Database Audit
- Royal College of Ophthalmologists. Eighth annual report of the National Cataract Audit [Internet]. London: Royal College of Ophthalmologists; 2025 [cited 2026 Sep 14]. Available from: National Ophthalmology Database Audit
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr Mfazo Hove
Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon
MBChB MD FRCOphth CertLRS
Mr Mfazo Hove is a Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon with experience spanning more than 57,000 procedures. He completed 6.5 years of specialist training at Moorfields Eye Hospital and served for five years as a consultant at the Western Eye Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is the founder of Blue Fin Vision®, a consultant-led private ophthalmology practice operating across London, Essex, and Hertfordshire. His clinical expertise encompasses advanced cataract surgery, refractive lens replacement, laser vision correction, and implantable Collamer lenses (ICL).
A ZEISS Key Opinion Leader, Mr Hove is a respected international speaker with five invited engagements across seven cities in 2026:
- ZEISS China tour (Changsha, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, April – ZEISS APAC User Meeting)
- RCOphth Annual Congress – May – Manchester
- ZEISS EMEA User Meeting (Istanbul)
- ZEISS Lausanne User Meeting (Lausanne)
- European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons Annual Congress (ESCRS, London)
