Sir,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reply to the letter by Liu et al. It raises a few questions, which I will clarify keeping in mind that it was a retrospective study:

  1. 1)

    The trainees are taught to treat flat retinal tears and tears with a cuff of subretinal fluid (shallow SRF at the edges of tears only) with laser retinopexy.

  2. 2)

    Review of our data has shown that of the 24 patients requiring retreatment, only three patients may have been outside the above criteria,

  3. 3)

    In our conclusion, we had already pointed out that to improve treatment standards, patient selection and seeking vitreoretinal opinion in difficult cases is important.

  4. 4)

    Although the failure of primary treatment for retinal tears is multifactorial, in our paper we have documented that inability to adequately treat/surround the retinal tears with laser retinopexy was the single most important factor in most of the patients requiring retreatment. This inadequacy was mainly due to the inability of the trainees in using indirect laser delivery system. An audit conducted of our trainees did confirm our belief that more supervised training of indirect laser treatment of trainees was essential.