WCPOS V 2024’s Pediatric Ophthalmic Pentathlon Showcases Eye Doctors’ Work-Play Balance

Early morning on Day 3 of the 5th World Congress of Paediatric Ophthalmology & Strabismus (WCPOS V 2024), Conference Hall 2 on Level 3 of the KLCC was abuzz with participants of the Paediatric Ophthalmic Pentathlon – the first of its kind at WCPOS!

In the Olympics, a pentathlon is a sport consisting of fencing (one-touch épée), freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, pistol shooting and cross-country running. At WCPOS V 2024, it was turned into a fun session with 5 different rounds of interactive activities for 4 opposing teams. 

ROUND 1: Quick clips

This round is a presentation of rare surgical cases. The case video presented by Team A won the highest point. It was a case of an orbital teratoma — a congenital orbital teratoma – which is a very rare tumor located in the eye socket (orbit) of babies. It is a benign malformation that often can be diagnosed prenatally, and in this case, was diagnosed using a prenatal MRI.

ROUND 2: Just a minute

In this round, a team representative was allowed to talk non-stop for 1 minute about a random situation or phrase chosen and flashed on the big screen. Team D represented by Dr. Edward Wilson (USA) won this round.

The situation: You were made aware of an impending tsunami. Which 3 objects will you take with you and why?

The 1-minute answer: “I would gather up family members, that’s certainly number 1,” said Dr. Wilson. “And make sure that they are all linked together so we can all leave at the same time. Things like papers and files that are in a waterproof safe or not, that would certainly be second. It would seem unusual but I will pick some very important family images that go back several generations that would be in a hard drive on a laptop or something.”

And for the win, he concluded: “Because family, and then safety and then trying to make sure that if all is lost, we have our family history and the things that are important.”

Of note is Team C’s take on this round, by Dr. Himanshu Matalia (India). (Editor’s Note: Not intentional, but we have no group photo of Team C.) [TEAM C: Dr. Justin Mora (New Zealand), Dr. Himanshu Matalia (India), Dr. Saurabh Jain (United Kingdom), Dr. Kianti Raisa Darusman (Indonesia) and Dr. Rita Gama (Portugal).]

The situation: If you could have any superpower, but it worked only on Wednesdays… What would that be?

The 1-minute answer: “The superpower that I would choose is to change the calendar, to change the dates. My superpower would be to remove Wednesday from the days of the calendar, which means that everyday is gonna be a holiday and every day I’m gonna chill out. That’s the best superpower! In fact when I remove Wednesday from my days, there is no week left, I’m just on a long vacation, possibly in some exotic place, without  worrying what I’m gonna do the next day because the next day is a holiday too. So my superpower is a holiday-man and I’m gonna be on holiday for life!”

ROUND 3: Crack the codes

Team A won this round. In this round, 10 ophthalmic terms were displayed in scrambled form. Two participants from each team had to unscramble as many words as they could in 2 minutes.

Imagine a game of BOGGLE but only using ophthalmic words and terms. With scrambled words, we all could falter sometimes and it was fascinating to see that happen with ophthalmologists as well, especially under time pressure.

ROUND 4: Know your celebs

Team D won this round. In this round, pictures of eyes were shown on the screen and opposing teams had to guess who they were. The “celebs” could be anyone based on the different categories: American personalities with ophthalmic disorders, legends in ophthalmology, books and movie stars and famous personalities across the globe. 

This round was quite hilarious and almost brought the conference hall down with uncontained laughter from the audience. Participating team members had to guess who was in the picture being shown on screen, but only the eyes of the “celebs” were visible. And because the “celebrity” you had to guess the name of could either be dead or still living—or worse, could be a random fictional character—made this round an interesting test of whether or not ophthalmologists read literature outside of their specialties. 

ROUND 5: Rapid fire quiz

And this round is the clincher! After 3 rounds of pure fun, our ophthalmologists just had to get back to the science once more. In this round, each team was asked 10 questions. Two participants from each team had to answer as many of these questions as they could in 2 minutes. 

Then a display of ultimate competitiveness ensued. A tie between Team A and Team D had to be broken. Twice! 

A few more rapid fire quiz questions were not able to break the initial tie. And so the ultimate tie-breaker had to be a 1-minute round of evaluating, diagnosing (and suggesting a treatment of?) a given clinical scenario– which Team A eventually won. 

“I think we can all agree that we’d never had an educational, informational, entertaining event like this before,” said Prof. Ken Nischal, who was one of the event’s judges, before announcing the overall winner – Team D.

Kudos to the following for organizing this event: Dr. Parth Shah (Australia), Dr. Savleen Kaur (India), Dr. Meenakshi Swaminathan (India), Dr. Asimina Mataftsi (Greece) and Dr. Ramesh Kekunnaya (India), who also hosted the entire session. 

Thank you to Teams B and C for being such good sports.

Congratulations to Team D for winning the Grand Prize!

Editor’s Note: Reporting for this article occurred at the 5th World Congress of Paediatric Ophthalmology & Strabismus (WCPOS V 2024) from 11-13 July in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.