About

Inflammatio is a thematic meeting organized every 4 years. It’s purpose is to provide insight or clarification on the definition or approach to the diagnosis or therapy of a specific disease or set of inflammatory diseases.

The board has decided that this year’s topic would be white dot syndromes.

This is a group of inflammatory entities affecting the outer retina, choriocapillaris and choroid. Over the years, they have been grouped together solely based on their ability to generate what appears to be white flecks, dots or spots sometimes very visible or barely so when the inner eye is examined. It regroups different pathophysiologic mechanisms, different clinical evolutions, and require different therapeutic approaches. Several conflicting definitions have been provided in the past. There is overlap in the appearance and evolution of several of these entities muddling the ability to label any given patient based on a specific pattern. Yet, if we want to better understand each of these entities and provide better care, it is necessary to differentiate each of these and evaluate systematically therapeutic approaches.

Much of our current knowledge is based on imaging which over the last 20 years has rapidly evolved, allowing us to better differentiate these entities and develop a sense of the changes with disease progression and the underlying mechanisms.

It is time to change the nomenclature based on imaging findings, and known pathophysiologic mechanisms. To this aim, through extensive review of the literature, the collection of cases with well defined images, Inflammatio 2024 will attempt to define the imaging characteristics of some of the key entities that fall under the label “white dot syndromes”. The proceedings of the meeting will be the published following the conclusion of the meeting and ongoing work.