Remembering Sir Harold Ridley

On November 29, 1949 Sir Harold Ridley performed the first IOL operation on a 45 year-old woman at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, disrupting one of the basic tenets of surgery that one should never deliberately put a foreign body into the eye. The lens was designed by Ridley, John Pike of Rayner, and John Holt of ICI, and manufactured by Rayner in Brighton, UK. With this procedure Ridley forced a major rethinking of surgical principles.

Ridley’s invention marked the beginning of modern ophthalmic surgery, with the subsequent evolution of the IOL into the safe and reliable implants we all use today. It also marked the beginning of a major change in the practice of ophthalmology to improve surgery and led to the development of the operating microscope, phacoemulsification, instruments, viscosurgical and vitrectomy devices now in common use. Furthermore, it paved the way for the era of implantable prosthetic biodevices, which has impacted many medical fields over the last few decades.

For Ridley, this was the beginning of an era of inspiration, reward and challenge, unfortunately marred by the hostility of many colleagues within the academic establishment in Europe and the US. By the late 1970s IOLs and implantation procedures had undergone many improvements, and Ridley's invention had become an accepted option for the optical correction of aphakia. Since that time Ridley has been accorded due recognition for his unique contribution to ophthalmology through the conferring of many awards and honors, including Fellowship of the Royal Society. He was knighted by the Queen in 1999.

On November 29, 2024, the global ophthalmic community will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the first IOL implantation. The United Kingdom & Ireland Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgeons (UKISCRS) will be marking the occasion with a celebration conference from November 28-29.

The UKISCRS Conference is the culmination of these celebrations and will be a special once-in-a-generation conference. The Presidents of the UK & Ireland Ophthalmology Societies will be presenting on November 28. There will be a free paper presentation of the best new findings in UK IOL research, and a session where past and present UKISCRS Council members discuss their worst ever cases.

The current Presidents of ESCRS, APACRS, ASCRS, and the International Intraocular Implant Club, which was founded by Sir Harold in 1966, will moderate sessions featuring the best speakers from their organizations. They will discuss where cataract surgery needs to progress further, what surgery will look like at the 100th anniversary, and show videos of the most complex IOL surgery possible. The meeting aims to be a fitting celebration of one of the most successful operations ever created!

https://www.ukiscrs.org.uk/