Refractive eye surgery is non-essential eye surgery used to improve the refractive state of the eye and decrease or eliminate dependency on glasses or contact lenses. This can include various methods of surgical remodeling of the cornea (keratomileusis), lens implantation or lens replacement. The most common methods today use excimer lasers to reshape the curvature of the cornea. Successful refractive eye surgery can reduce or cure common vision disorders such as myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia and astigmatism.
Eduard Konrad Zirm was an ophthalmologist who performed the first successful human full-thickness corneal transplant on 7 December 1905.
José Ignacio Barraquer Moner was a Spanish ophthalmologist and inventor born in Barcelona who did most of his life's work in Bogotá, Colombia.
Dan Z. Reinstein is a specialist ophthalmic surgeon in the UK and is a board-certified registered specialist ophthalmologist in the US, Canada and the UK, specialising in the field of refractive surgery. He is medical director of the London Vision Clinic and a voluntary faculty member as Professor of Ophthalmology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons as well as a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster, UK and Professeur Associé at the Faculty of Medicine, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Arthur von Hippel was a German ophthalmologist who was a native of Fischhausen, East Prussia. He was the father of ophthalmologist Eugen von Hippel (1867-1938).
Avi Wallerstein is a Canadian ophthalmologist and laser eye surgeon who specializes in surgical vision correction, also termed refractive eye surgery. He practises in Montreal and Toronto. In 2001, he co-founded LASIK MD with Mark Cohen. LASIK MD is Canada's largest provider of laser refractive surgery, performing over 60,000 procedures a year. He is one of only 14 certified CLasik instructors in North America.
The John A. Moran Eye Center is an academic medical center offering comprehensive, multi-specialty care, basic, translational and clinical research, ophthalmology residency and fellowship training, and local and international humanitarian outreach. It is located on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah and is a department within the University of Utah Health Care system.
Gholam A. Peyman is an ophthalmologist, retina surgeon, and inventor. He is best known for his invention of LASIK eye surgery, a vision correction procedure designed to allow people to see clearly without glasses. He was awarded the first US patent for the procedure in 1989.
Peter S. Hersh is an American ophthalmologist and specialist in LASIK eye surgery, keratoconus, and diseases of the cornea. He co-authored the article in the journal Ophthalmology that presented the results of the study that led to the first approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the excimer laser for the correction of nearsightedness in the United States. Hersh was also medical monitor of the study that led to approval of corneal collagen crosslinking for the treatment of keratoconus.
Raymond Mark Stein, MD, FRCSC, DABO, is a Canadian ophthalmologist. He practices refractive and cataract surgery. He is the medical director of the Bochner Eye Institute in Toronto, Ontario and Chief of Ophthalmology at the Scarborough Hospital.
Professor Harminder Singh Dua CBE is an Indian-British medical doctor and researcher. He is the chair and professor of ophthalmology at University of Nottingham and is the head of the Division of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. He also treats patients at his private practice in the LaserVision Nottingham Clinic. Prior, he was associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA when he was invited to chair in Nottingham in April 1994. He earlier did his Graduation in Medicine from Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur.
Gerard Sutton is an Australian ophthalmic surgeon and ophthalmologist in Australia and New Zealand. His specialty is laser vision correction, cataract and lens surgery, and corneal transplantation.
Reza Dana is the Claes H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology, senior scientist and W. Clement Stone Clinical Research Scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Harvard-Vision Clinical Scientist Development Program.
Theo Seiler is a German ophthalmologist and physicist. He is considered one of the pioneers of refractive surgery.
Farhad Hafezi is a prominent Swiss eye surgeon and researcher. Hafezi first gained recognition as a leading retina researcher in 1994, having been the first to discover a gene responsible for light-induced retinal degeneration. However, he changed his research focus to the cornea in 2003, and it is this work, particularly on corneal collagen cross-linking (CXL), which he helped pioneer, and advanced laser refractive surgery that he is internationally known for today. Hafezi's current clinical and laboratory research is focused on gaining a better understanding of the cornea. His research group at the University of Zurich has three main research foci:
Berthold Seitz is a German ophthalmologist, professor and director of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Saarland University Medical Center in Homburg, Saarland. He is known for his scientific contributions in the fields of cornea transplantation, cataract surgery and artificial lens-calculation after refractive corneal surgery as well as techniques of amniotic membrane transplantation and its histological integration patterns in the cornea.
Noel Alpins is an Australian ophthalmologist who developed the Alpins method of astigmatism analysis used in refractive, corneal, and cataract surgery, used in the research of LASIK.
The Legacy Devers Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon, is one of the few private, non-profit centers for ophthalmological care, research, and training in the United States. The Institute is affiliated with Legacy Health, a network of seven hospitals in Portland and Southwest Washington.
John Marshall MBE, FMedSci, PhD, DSc, FRCPath, FRSB, FRCOphth(Hon), FRCOptom(Hon), FARVO is a British medical scientist and inventor. Currently he is the Frost Professor of Ophthalmology at the Institute of Ophthalmology UCL and Emeritus Professor King's College London. He is a pioneer of laser eye surgery.
Allon Barsam is a London-based ophthalmologist specializing in cataract surgery, refractive surgery and corneal and external eye disease. Barsam carried out the first human treatments of microwave keratoplasty.
