Sir Nicholas Harold Lloyd Ridley: 10 July 1906 - 25 May 2001.

Sir Harold Ridley invented and refined the modern miracle of replacing lenses obscured by cataracts with plastic optical lenses, thus rendering a complete cataract cure. This operation, broadly termed the cataract-intraocular lens (IOL) operation, has since brought sight to many millions of people throughout the world, and continues to improve the quality of life of more than 10 million patients worldwide each year. Ridley not only launched this powerful and irreversible forward movement in the field of ophthalmology and the visual sciences, but through it he also helped give birth to the exciting and new field of artificial biodevice implantation as well as transplantation techniques now applied to many other organs and tissues of the body. He has therefore been credited with healing to create the relatively new specialty of biomedical engineering. Few of the millions of patients worldwide who now enjoy the benefits of the modern cataract - IOL operation are aware of the origin of this innovation. Indeed, few eye care professionals - even ophthalmic surgeons who implant them almost daily - are aware of the origin of the IOL - an invention that, as Harold himself liked to say, 'cured aphakia'. (The word aphakia comes from teh Greek, meaning absence of lens, the situation that occurs when a cataractous lens is surgically removed.)

[The evolution of cataract surgery, extra- and intraocular correction of aphakia]. / Evoliutsiia kataraktal'noi khirurgii, ékstra- i intraokuliarnoi korrektsii afakii.

The evolution of cataract surgery during the recent 2 centuries, and especially in the last 50 years, witnessed essential changes--from reclination of the lens and a traditional extracapsular cataract extraction to cataract microsurgery including phacoemulsification. A lack of the lens in the eye, i.e. aphakia, is considered to be a serious complication. The optic extraocular correction of aphakia is implemented mainly by the use of spectacles and contact lenses, which are not deprived of essential shortcomings. H. Ridley was the first to implant, in 1949, a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) intraocular lens (IOL). After that, anterior-chamber and iris-clips lenses as well as extrapupillary lenses with fixation to Sulcus cyliaris, which had by some complications, were offered. Only in 1973, we offered, for the first time in the world practice, an intracapsular implantation and intercapsular fixation of IOLs of various models. The designed intraocular correction of aphakia was checked by time and it is used now in cataract microsurgery, including small-incisions as well as ultrasound and laser phacoemulsification. The use of the lens bag as a natural bed for the fixation and isolation of IOL from intraocular structures is a priority direction in the Russian research ophthalmology.