The 2026 PAT Survey is open!
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Take the 28th Annual PAT Survey
How do your practice choices compare with those of your ASRS colleagues in the United States and around the world? It's easy to find out—take the 28th Annual PAT Survey.
Each year since 1999, the ASRS PAT Survey has measured our members’ preferences on a wide range of medical, surgical, and socioeconomic topics.
For 2026, we’ve added a uveitis subspecialty section—and for the second consecutive year, we’ve included an optional subspecialty section for ASRS members who practice ocular oncology.
You can take the online PAT Survey whenever and wherever it’s most convenient for you. Your ASRS member username and password will give you instant access—and if you don’t complete the whole survey in one session, you can save your answers and come back to the survey as often as you’d like.
Take the 28th Annual PAT Survey >
See how your answers compare
Want to see how your ASRS colleagues answered the PAT Survey questions? As soon as you complete the survey, you’ll get real-time results showing how your answer to each question compares with those of everyone who has taken the survey. Final results will compare US and international ASRS members’ responses to each question.
Tracking key trending data
In addition to providing a yearly snapshot of retina specialists’ preferences, the PAT Survey collects longitudinal data allowing us to track significant trends in retina practice. The 2026 final survey results will include trending data on how ASRS members’ preferred treatment approaches have changed over the past several years.
Take the 28th Annual PAT Survey >
Survey results will be released in July
PAT Survey Editor Paul Hahn, MD, PhD, FASRS, will present the 2026 final survey results and multiyear trending data at the ASRS 44th Annual Meeting, July 15-18, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A PAT Survey supplement—with complete 2026 survey results, multiyear trending data, and a roundtable discussion—will also be mailed as a supplement to the fall issue of Retina Times.
A separate set of PAT Survey graphs will compare the responses of retina fellows in training with those of ASRS members in practice.
See the 2025 PAT Survey results >
See the 2025 trending data >
A look at the story behind the PAT Survey
Back in 1999, an ambitious Society initiative was launched—the brainchild of 2001-2002 President Kirk Packo, MD, FASRS, and 2018-2019 President John Pollack, MD, FASRS, who had completed his fellowship just 2 years earlier. The new initiative was dubbed the Preferences and Trends (PAT) Survey.
As John Pollack recalls in The History of the American Society of Retina Specialists: 25 Years,[1] “We decided the ASRS survey would be designed to identify new and evolving therapies and surgical techniques, controversies, preferences, and trends. It would help relatively isolated retina specialists know if they were practicing along the lines of other specialists … [and] would lead retina specialists to ponder, ‘Am I ahead of my time, on time, or behind the times?’ The PAT Survey would allow us to ‘take the pulse’ of retina specialists around the world—something that had never been done before.”
There was no shortage of ideas—from a first draft of about 250 questions, the original PAT Survey was honed down to 126 questions in 17 categories. (The survey has been trimmed over the years to an average of 75 questions.) Members took the original survey on paper or online, and the results were presented on individual hand-produced posters at the 1999 Annual Meeting of The Vitreous Society in Rome, Italy.
The PAT Survey results have been displayed at each ASRS Annual Meeting since then. As an ASRS member, you can access the complete PAT Survey archive.
Kirk Packo and John Pollack served as the PAT Survey editors until 2005, when Robert Mittra, MD, FASRS, became the editor and John Pollack stayed on board as co-editor. In 2011, J. Michael Jumper, MD, FASRS, became the PAT Survey editor with Robert Mittra as his co-editor. Thomas Stone, MD, FASRS, took over the reins as editor in 2013 with Robert Mittra continuing to serve as co-editor until 2014. In 2019, Thomas Stone named Paul Hahn, MD, PhD, FASRS, as co-editor; Dr. Hahn became the PAT Survey editor in 2020.
PAT Survey results are copyrighted
Results of the PAT Survey are provided solely for the educational interest of ASRS members. All responses and data analyses are the sole property of the ASRS. Publication and/or use of the data are not permitted without prior written approval from the PAT Survey managing editor; email susan.raef@asrs.org.
Reference
- Pollack JS. ASRS Preferences and Trends Survey: a historical perspective. In: The History of the American Society of Retina Specialists: 25 Years. Chico, CA: American Society of Retina Specialists. 2007:50-51.