It is not by chance that the waiting room of his avant-garde dental clinic is every day full of patients. Professor Cusumano is never nervous and/or tense. This is also due to the perfect organization of his wife Cristina and of the precious help of his valid assistants. Prof. Cusumano is a guarantee of rare competence and availability. He is available (I am saying this because of my personal experience) also in the middle of August, if necessary. He is a conscientious professional who, thanks to his Anglo-Saxon formation, has no problems to suggest a “second advice”, a second medical consultation, before any important therapeutic decision. And it is for all these reasons that I have been “blindly” entrusting to him the health of my eyes for many years now!

In sports as in life, perseverance and commitment are fundamental in order to achieve our objectives. These are the qualities that characterize the work of Prof. Cusumano, like a true sportsman. Dexterity and courage in him become competence and passion and his success coincides with that of his patient.

My life has always been inspired by art in the many forms taken by it. My career in the film industry accompanied my artistic life, however never prevailing. Painting, sculpture and photography have always been my faithful companions and constant joy for many years. Then, in the course of time, forms and volumes have been gradually fading until I met Prof. Andrea Cusumano, who, with professionalism and attention, helped me to continue with my usual passion my travel through the art with the gift of a renewed and perfect vision of the objects and life itself..

A few months ago my cataract was operated; the surgeon was a young eye specialist who is teaching in Bonn and at the Cornell University in New York. He is not only an excellent doctor, he is also very nice and we became friends.

I had the possibility to follow – at least in part – the professional activity and human life course of Dr. Cusumano. They both present an enviable balance in a continuously developing clinical and surgical specialty. His active participation in research in the United States and in Europe enabled him to apply in Ophthalmology cutting edge diagnostic techniques and surgical procedures and to introduce significant innovative pharmacological, laser and surgical treatments, existing today to the service of an ophthalmology that is at the same time less traumatic and more effective.

I met Prof. Andrea Cusumano more than fifteen years ago. I immediately felt that his delicacy, security and curiosity were signs of a great competence. In all these years I entrusted to him the essential elements of my work, my eyes, because I understood that treating patients is for him also a way of probing into the study. The curiosity I had perceived during our first meeting is that of a person born with a passion for research.

I am 89 years old and am still reading without glasses even small characters (provided, however, that there is enough light) and drive with no problems. This is an enviable condition because I read a lot (more on the screen of the computer than on books), I work with mathematics and, from time to time, I draw portraits. Very likely a part of the merit is of my genes, but I had problems with my eyes and Prof. Cusumano solved them. In more than a decade I not only appreciated the large quantity of ultra-modern instrumentation he uses, but his modus operandi. Due to my scientific background, I like to understand, at least in general terms, which are my physical problems and also how the treatments and surgeries, which are necessary in order to solve them, work. Prof. Cusumano explains, diagnoses and predicts the result of the treatments correctly anticipating the final outcome. In the course of the years we have built a friendly intellectual relationship.

In life the relationship between us and those who take care of our health is important. Among these I do not hesitate to mention Andrea Cusumano. I remember today as if it was yesterday the indication of a lifelong friend: ‘you can trust him’. This is the way a relationship that has been lasting through time was born and was extended to my entire family. A medical relationship that became friendship.

I met Prof. Andrea Cusumano when the problems of my failing eyesight were no longer compatible with my professional and personal life. I was impressed by the way he succeeded in a short time to cause me to achieve results that I had not been able to obtain in the United States. He followed me personally throughout the course of my treatment with great professionalism and scrupulous attention. Today, after his intervention, I am able to see things close up and from a distance and do not need glasses. I appreciated Prof. Cusumano’s care and dedication applied every day to his patients, which he addresses with great warmth, establishing with them, as it happened with me, a relationship that goes well beyond his professional assistance.

Entering Prof. Cusumano’s Clinic gives rise immediately to a feeling of involvement and efficiency, which generates security and serenity. Leaving out of consideration the persons, which one happens to meet in the waiting room of his Clinic, ranging from a famous television actress to the lawyer just involved in a trial of which the press is currently reporting in detail, there are also simple people, maybe even poor people, to whom I know that Andrea devotes himself as to a mission, avoiding to expect from them even the simple gratefulness. When the time arrives to meet the “Doctor”, one perceives immediately Andrea’s humanity and professionalism, which reassures and comforts on every occasion. However, it is outside the Clinic that Andrea and his wife astonished me more, because of their curiosity, their many interests, the harmony that exists between them, and the religious sense that animates them. An event summarizes the great esteem I feel for Andrea. A common friend had a serious problem with his eyesight, which Andrea was undoubtedly able to solve; however he knew that another doctor had more experience on that matter. Well, Andrea not only mentioned this to our friend but even accompanied him to his colleague, to the other side of Europe, in order to show him how much he cared. I do not believe that many doctors would behave with the same style.

Curiosity and passion merged with superior intelligence, strength and courage can give excellent and even surprising results. This is what I say every time I meet Andrea Cusumano and observe his activity, as a doctor, scientist and as a great enthusiast of life. Only a great passion for life, both his own and that of the others, can in fact urge a person to work so intensively, always with the utmost professionalism and – what is even more extraordinary – with inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm. After many years of professional contacts, I have now the honor and the joy of following him in his greatest battle, that against blindness, which he is fighting in the frontline as President of the Macula & Genoma Foundation Onlus, a no-profit organization devoted in particular to the research and disclosure of new therapies and futuristic surgical techniques in the framework of the retinal pathologies. In this direction the Foundation promotes and organizes every year “Macula Today”, a conference that is not sponsored and is completely void of economic and industrial interests, where “giants” of the international research coming from all Continents put for one day their skills and knowledge at disposal of the patients, their family members, ophthalmologists, researchers, scientific journalists and authorities of the sector, in order to help those who lost their eyesight and prevent that this happens to those who are genetically predestined to lose it. I have been having for many years now the pleasure to present in Rome the “Macula Today” Conference and this appointment has become even for me, who have always been experiencing the world of medicine and research, a unique and always extraordinary opportunity of exchange and knowledge, which satisfies and stimulates me to improve what I always do for the patients and my public.