Pioneers in sight restoration have ties to CharlestonDr. David Apple wrote to the Post and Courier recently and shares his insight with The Catalyst.Letter to the editor:
We were saddened to learn in the June 3 issue of the Post and Courier that Dr. Svyatoslav Fyodorov of Moscow had died in a helicopter crash in that city. Dr. Fyodorov, a good friend of ours for many years, was one of the inventors of radial keratotomy and modern corneal refractive surgery. He gained international fame in the 1970s when a story of his “assembly line” eye surgery in Moscow was aired on CBS's 60 Minutes. He personally taught his surgical techniques to Dr. William Vallotton, my predecessor at the Storm Eye Institute, who visited his clinic in Moscow. Dr. Vallotton was the first to apply these surgical techniques in South Carolina. His discoveries are now making a great impact. In Charleston. This includes the development of the Magill Center of Vision Correction at the Storm Eye Institute, which is providing excellent vision enhancement to countless individuals in our state, especially with the laser (LASIK) technique. This center was made possible by generous benefactors in Greenville, Holly and Arthur Magill, who have also been tremendous benefactors to Spoleto. The center is ably manned by Dr. Kerry Solomon, a former medical student and researcher under my direction, who has grown into an outstanding specialist in his field. The second event is much happier. Dr. Harold Ridley, an ophthalmologist in London, England, invented the intraocular lens, which is a plastic artificial prostheses used after cataract surgery. He devised this after much research on World War II fighter pilots with eye injuries who had fragments of plastic in their eye from injuries in the Battle of Britain. His discovery and first surgical implantation in 1949 has now led to the cure of cataracts, which now affects three million people worldwide each year, and will affect almost all of us before we pass away. I am sure there is almost no family in the Lowcountry that does not have one or more relatives that have benefitted from Mr. Ridley's invention. Ridley was undiscovered and virtually ignored for almost 40 years, until we invited him to Charleston and when Dr. James Edwards and our department presented him with an honorary doctor's degree in 1989 (just before Hurricane Hugo). His fame has subsequently spread. Dr. and Mrs. Ridley, also good friends of the late Barbara Williams, a well-known Charleston philanthropist, visited Charleston and the Storm Eye Institute several times in the 1990s. Now 94 years of age, his acclaim has now reached a peak in that Knighthood was conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth II on Feb. 9—a very unusual event for an eye surgeon. These two gentlemen have provided miraculous cures helping eradicate blindness and poor vision to all of us in our state (and of course worldwide). We are grateful for their accomplishments and we salute them. Thank you very much. Sincerely yours, David J. Apple, M.D.
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