European registry on retinopathy of prematurity

This section keeps you updated on the major developments throughout the EU-ROP project.

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1,000th patient reached!

The EU-ROP registry has surpassed 1,000 enrolled patients in December 2025!

This milestone reflects the continuous growth of the project and the strong commitment of all participating centers across Europe. Through your dedicated contributions, careful documentation, and excellent collaboration, EU-ROP is steadily developing into one of the most important data sources for understanding and improving the care of ROP in Europe. By now we are by far the biggest data collection on infants treated for ROP WORLDWIDE!!

The 1000th patient was entered into the database by Prof. Baran Özdemir from the Gazi University in Ankara from Türkiye.

We are truly grateful for this progress and would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all partners.
Your engagement makes this accomplishment possible - and it provides a solid foundation for further scientific insights and enhancements in clinical practice.

Thank you to every center whose effort, accuracy, and motivation have contributed to this development. We look forward to reaching new milestones together and continuing the successful evolution of EU-ROP in 2026.

EU-ROP at the World ROP Congress 2025

This year’s World ROP Congress will be held from 4 to 7 December in Florence, Italy, featuring an exciting scientific program! The preliminary program is already available, and registration is open at worldropcongress2025.com

We are proud to share that four abstracts based on data from the EU-ROP registry have been accepted as oral presentations, showcasing the breadth of data and international collaboration within our network.

We will also hold our first in-person international EU-ROP study group meeting on-site and look forward to meeting many EU-ROP investigators in Florence.

Friday, December 5th
16:30–18:30
ORSANMICHELE ROOM

We are very excited about this global event and the opportunity to present EU-ROP’s growing contribution to international ROP research.

900th patient

As autumn 2025 has arrived, the EU-ROP project continues to grow steadily. Thanks to the ongoing commitment and excellent collaboration of all participating centers across Europe, we have reached an exciting new milestone: 900 patients entered into the EU-ROP registry as of October 2025!

We are delighted to announce that Anastasiia Andriivna Pieshkova from Odessa, Ukraine, has enrolled the 900th patient in the study. Congratulations!

A heartfelt Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this achievement through your continuous efforts and dedication to improving the understanding and care of ROP.

EU-ROP at the DOG 2025 in Berlin

This year’s DOG took place at the end of September in Berlin – and the EU-ROP project was once again represented on site!
Particularly noteworthy was the well-attended ROP course: under the direction of Andreas Stahl, Tim U. Krohne, Johanna M. Pfeil, and Wolf A. Lagrèze, engaging topics such as the assessment of plus disease in ROP screening, disinfection in ROP treatment, and follow-up care for preterm infants were discussed. The course also featured a presentation on the latest real-world data from the EU-ROP registry.

Following the course, an informal EU-ROP meeting took place which provided a great opportunity for new and experienced centers to meet in person and exchange insights on current developments, analyses, as well as practical tips and tricks for data entry.

In another session during the congress, two of our MD students presented further data from the EU-ROP registry: A country comparison of Germany and Turkey and an overview on photo documentation in ROP management in Europe.

700th patient

With the help of now 53 centers from 14 countries, we were able to achieve 700 entered patients in the database in October 2024.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

And a big Thank you to Dr. Julia Dezor-Garus from the University of Medical Sciences in Poznan, Poland, who entered the 700th patient on the 27th of October 2024!

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DOG 2024

The annual meeting of the German Society of Ophthalmology (DOG) in 2024 was a full success for the EU-ROP project. Not only did we meet some members of the EU-ROP team, but we also got to know new people interested in ROP and were able to present many talks on the EU-ROP registry.

Three of our doctoral students had the chance to present data from the EU-ROP registry in different talks. Deborah Müller presented her talk on the topic of differences in anti-VEGF use for ROP across Europe. Laura Schnorr held a talk on her findings regarding photodocumentation of ROP in Europe and Sophie Schnorr presented her findings on the comparison of children with AP-ROP and A-ROP. Additionally, a workshop on ROP was held, in which Prof. Andreas Stahl presented a talk with the title “Correctly categorise ROP severity levels: Comparison of different ROP scoring systems”. In the same workshop Dr. Johanna Pfeil presented the topic “Understanding ROP data: joint analyses of the Retina.net ROP, EU-ROP and FRB-ROP registers”. Prof. Andreas Stahl also presented the EU-ROP registry in the workshop “Ophthalmological registers - what can we learn from them?”.

Please see below a picture of the doctoral students of the EU-ROP project (from left to right: Deborah Müller, Sophie Schnorr, Laura Schnorr)

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EURETINA 2024

At the annual meeting of the European Society of Retina Specialists, Sophie Schnorr presented data from the newest interim analysis of the EU-ROP registry in the symposium of the German retina society and was able to meet several EU-ROP study team members.

Please see below a picture of the team of the symposium (from left to right: Nicolas Feltgen, Thomas Ach, Sophie Schnorr, Theresa Barth, Nicole Eter, Daniel Pauleikhoff, Horst Helbig).

Bildschirmfoto_2024-10-30_um_13.56.27.png

500th patient

Congratulations to everyone, we did it!

With the joint hard work of so many centers and people, we were able to achieve the unofficial goal of 500 patients in 2023!

Thank you for your amazing work and the huge impact you are all making.

A big Thank you to Dr. Aslihan Uzun from Ordu University in Turkey, who entered the 500^th patient on the 30^th of December 2023.

Everyone who entered patients especially during the last few days of 2023 was a huge contribution to achieve this goal and we notice and appreciate the work of everyone!

First EU-ROP papers published

As the EU-ROP project continues to evolve, we have reached another big milestone: the publication of not only one but two papers with data from the EU-ROP registry!

The article “Comparability of input parameters in the German Retina.net ROP registry and the EU-ROP registry – An exemplary comparison between 2011 and 2021” was published in Acta Ophthalmologica. The paper compares the input parameters of the German Retina.net ROP registry with the ones from the EU-ROP registry and investigates the possibility of joint analyses of different registry data. This is done using exemplary datasets from both databases. To sum up the results, joint analyses of different registries are possible when certain adjustments are made.

If you want to read the full paper, you can download the paper here.

The second paper “Development of a joint set of database parameters for the EU-ROP and “Fight Childhood Blindness!” ROP registries” was published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. It provides a standardized set of parameters to guide data collection in future ROP trials and registries that might develop in other parts of the world as well as routine clinical practice.

If you want to read the full paper, you can download the paper here.

We are very proud of this achievement and are grateful for everyone who contributed to these projects.

400th patient

The EU-ROP registry is growing day by day and a few weeks ago, in September 2023, the 400^th patient was entered into the EU-ROP database.

The 400^th patient was entered by Prof. Ognyan Mladenov from the Alexandrovska University in Sofia, Bulgaria, who had also entered the 200^th patient last year.

Congratulations and a massive Thank you to each and every one who is contributing to this project!

We are very grateful how the EU-ROP registry is evolving and are looking forward to the next developments!

DOG 2023

The yearly congress of the German Ophthalmologic Society (DOG) took place from the 28.09.-01.10.2023. Prof. Andreas Stahl and Prof. Tim Krohne organized a symposium, in which lectures from Prof. Stahl, Prof. Krohne, Prof. Lorenz about ROP and the newest developments in this field were presented. A current interim analysis from the EU-ROP registry was presented by Dr. Pfeil in this symposium.

First EU-ROP Research Meeting

The EU-ROP project is steadily growing. At the moment 61 centers have obtained a positive ethic's vote, from which 36 centers are actively adding patients to the registry. As a result, 307 patients and therefore 614 eyes are already entered into the database.

In order to keep the growing EU-ROP team up to date about research questions we are currently working on and in order to involve the members actively in these questions, we plan to host regular EU-ROP research meetings.

The first EU-ROP research meeting took place on the 1st of June 2023 at 6pm.

During these meetings we will give a short status update, regarding the number of centres/ countries and patients in the project.

But more interesting, we will present interim data from questions we are looking into. This will give the opportunity to get input from the centers at this level already and shape future research questions to be answered with data from the EU-ROP project.

We are looking forward to get in touch with the whole EU-ROP team to discuss our current ideas and hope, that a lot of the centers will participate.

300th patient

Only a few months ago, we were able to celebrate the 200th patient entered into the EU-ROP database. It's amazing how quick the EU-ROP is growing: Just recently, in May 2023, we exceedid the 300 patients mark. This is only possible thanks to the support and the steady activity of all our centers!

The 300th patient was entered into the database by Prof. Ozlem Yucel from the Ondokuz Mayis University from Turkey.

Currently there are 36 centers from 9 countries actively contributing data to the registry. And of course there are more to come with new centers, which have obtained a positive Ethic's vote who will soon be ready to start entering their patients.

We are very happy how the EU-ROP project is developing and look forward to the next months!

A big Thank you to everyone participating in the EU-ROP registry.

Website Update

On our EU-ROP Website you will find some new features.

It is now possible for participating centers to access the database and enter patients just by clicking on the icon on the subpage “How To Participate”.

Additionally, there is a new entry on our website called "Particpating Centers", where cooperating institutions are listed and pictured on a map. Check it out to see how many centers from which countries are already actively involved in the project.

ARVO 2023

Another point on the agenda of the EU-ROP projectis of course to publish the data gathered in the EU-ROP registry.

Last month we were able to present first international data from from Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria, Austria, Ukraine, France, Poland, and Greece at the ARVO 2023 in New Orleans! It was very well taken and a lot of people got interested in the EU-ROP project.

We conducted a first analysis about the prevalence of ROP severities in our multinational cohort. The submitted abstract presents data of 203 patients from 30 centers in 8 countries with a focus on ROP characteristics such as stage, zone and presence of plus disease. We hope that by presenting the abstract at the conference it will help to raise awareness for the project and to recruit additional interested centers.

ARVO_2023_EU-ROP_ROP_Characteristics_PfeilJ.pdf

Recap 2022

In 2022, the EU-ROP project achieved many important goals. Here is a little review of the first year as an international EU-ROP registry:

After having started in August 2021, we got truly international in March 2022, when the first patient at a center outside of Germany was entered into the database.

Now, only a year later there are data from 288 patients treated for ROP in the database. In just one year, eight further countries joined the EU-ROP registry and there are more to come. Three additional countries already obtained a positive Ethics’ approval and several more are currently working towards their participation.

We are very proud of how far the EU-ROP registry has come in just one year.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the help and great work of all participating centers.

A big thank you to each and every one who is contributing to this important project!

To another year of great work and even greater accomplishments.

200th patient entered into the EU-ROP database

The EU-ROP project is growing fast. While we had celebrated the 100^th patient only in June this year, we are very happy to inform you that the patient numbers have doubled by now and the 200^th patient has just recently been added to the database by Dr. Ognyan Mladenov from Alexandrovska University Hospital in Sofia (Bulgaria).

This significant achievement is only possible thanks to the joint effort of all participating centers!

We have currently 31 centers from eight countries actively contributing data to the EU-ROP project. Further centers have recently obtained a positive Ethic’s vote and are about to start entering their patients.

A big Thank you to all participating centers!

First patient outside Germany entered into the EU-ROP database

Another big milestone in the EU-ROP project can be ticked off: the first patient outside Germany was entered into the EU-ROP database. Now the EU-ROP project is truly becoming an international registry!

A very big Thank you to Dr. Aslihan Uzun from Ordu University in Turkey for entering the first patient into the EU-ROP database. We hope that other centers and countries will soon follow.

GETTING UP AND RUNNING: FIRST CENTER OUTSIDE GERMANY OBTAINS ETHICS APPROVAL FOR EU-ROP REGISTRY

A big milestone in the EU-ROP project has been achieved by obtaining Ethics approval for the EU-ROP registry in Paris, France at the end of November 2021. The “Hopital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild” in Paris was one of the first that agreed to participate in the project and within a very short period of time the patient documents were revised and all other documents necessary for Ethics submission were compiled. Congratulations to the team around Georges Caputo and Amelie Yavchitz for this achievement!

Want to learn more about the EU-ROP project?

On the 7th of April 2022 we had the opportunity to present the EU-ROP project in an eSeminar which is part of the Vision Care Academy supported by Natus^®.

During the first half of the seminar Prof. Stahl gave a short introduction to ROP in general. In the second half we gave detailed insights into the study design and objectives of the EU-ROP registry, the parameters collected in the database, the current status of the project and why such registries are important.

If you are interested in the eSeminar and want to learn more about the project, please have a look at the recorded eSeminar (by clicking on the image):

Prof. Stahl recognized as expertscape world expert in ROP

Prof. Andreas Stahl, the principal investigator of the EU-ROP registry study, has been active in research on retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) almost all his career. Based on his activities during the last 10 years, he was now placed in the top 0.1% of scholars writing about ROP and thus has been recognized as an Expertscape World Expert in Retinopathy of Prematurity! https://twitter.com/Daily_Experts/status/1460880918483197953?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Congratulations to this achievement!

EU-ROP database is online

Over the last few weeks our new EU-ROP database was developed at the Center for Clinical Studies in Cologne. The parameters to be collected in the database were defined together with our expert team consisting of ophthalmologists, neonatologists and parent representatives from around the globe. The EU-ROP database builds on the retina.net ROP registry which has collected ROP data in Germany since 2012. We are happy that retina.net ROP registry is now part of the joint EU-ROP database endeavor.

EU-ROP project approved by Ethics Committee

We are happy to announce that the EU-ROP project has now been successfully submitted at the leading Ethics Committee at the University Medicine Greifswald and we have received a positive opinion on the project. This allows us to start entering patient data into the EU-ROP database.