UKISCRS BRIEF HISTORY
“Lens Implantation has come of age” – so wrote Robert Drews as he headed his guest editorial for the first issue of any major eye journal devoted entirely to lens implantation - and yet, we hadn’t even started!"...
"And that was the occasion, amid a fever of excitement and buzz in the corridors, that a small group from England first floated the idea of having our own implant society." Read more
An Eye Family since 1976
The idea of UKIOIS (United Kingdom Intra-ocular Implant Society) was first floated at the Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, 2 October 1976, during the joint meeting of IIIC and AIOIS. Encouragement came chiefly from Peter Choyce and Cees Binkhorst (who had started the Nederland Implant Society), but also Piers Percival, Alan Ridgway, Eric Arnott and Hung Cheng who were meeting informally before dinner.
UKIOIS which later became UKIIS (UK Intraocular Implant Society) was set up on 12 December 1976 at the home of John Pearce, by Neil Dallas (President), John Pearce (Secretary), Piers Percival (Treasurer), with council members Alan Ridgway, Hung Cheng, Walter Rich, Eric Arnott, Peter Choyce, Michael Roper-Hall, and Ernie Ford of Rayner Intraocular Lenses, to advance intraocular implantation and to consider matters of policy relating to this discipline. Patrick Condon was added as regional member for Ireland the following year.
Surgical workshops were organised to disseminate implantology knowhow. The society would be a meeting platform for like-minded surgeons in different parts of the country, with affiliation to OSUK for publishing, and later for concessionary rates for the AIOIS journal and European implant meetings. The Society was officially launched on Sunday July 3, 1977 at Balliol College, Oxford. Surgical workshops were conducted at Bromsgrove in 1977, at Bristol and Birmingham in 1978 and at Scarborough in 1979. Stephen Haworth and Gordon Catford joined the council after the Scarborough meeting. The Rayner Medal Lecture (historically termed the Rayner Foundation Lecture) was established to encourage and finance Guest Lecturers coming from abroad as well as the UK. Professor Mles Galin gave the first Rayner Foundation Lecture in 1978.
Peter Choyce set up his eponymous lecture and gave the first one in 1981. By April 1983 the UKIIS membership included nearly a third of consultant ophthalmologists practising in England! With the introduction of RK/AK laser surgery in the UK in the mid-nineties, UKIIS broadened its ambit to cover refractive surgery at its meetings. This was successfully accomplished at the Goodwood Meeting in 1994. At the same time, UKIIS incorporated Irish colleagues into its name and to reflect these changes became UKISCRS, a limited company by guarantee on 22 June 1995. UKISCRS' inaugural Meeting on the Management of the Difficult Cataract was held on Monday 22 May 1995 in Birmingham at the RCO Congress.
The Ridley Eye Foundation Award
To mark the 75th Anniversary of the first IOL implant by Sir Harold Ridley FRS, the Ridley Eye Foundation* commissioned a bronze plaque by the renowned sculptor, Mark Coreth. Mark has a formidable reputation for sculpting bronze animals from his native Africa, as well as other wildlife that are of major conservation concern. Among his large scale work is the “Tree of Hope” composed of an olive tree surrounded by swifts. It was commissioned by the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group, and is situated in Muristan, the heart of Old Jerusalem.
This bronze award, featuring a native snow leopard on a Himalayan mountain ledge, was presented to the United Kingdom and Ireland Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons in 2024 in recognition of Sir Harold and his founding relationship with the Society from 1976 until his death in 2001. Mark chose to feature the endangered snow leopard as it represented not only the keen interest Sir Harold had in Nepal, but also because the first major grant the Foundation made was to Dr Malcolm Kerr Muir for his six month study into preventable blindness in the mountain regions of Nepal. The snow leopard represents the precipitous and fragile environment of its natural habitat, and is where the Foundation operates.
The Foundation Trustees and UKISCRS would like to express their gratitude to Mark for his creative design of the bronze award, and his extraordinary generosity in donating the plaque and scaled maquettes which will enable an enduring bond between Sir Harold and UKISCRS.
The criteria for the award, which is to be owned and presented by UKISCRS, and only when the judges consider it appropriate, is to an “individual for their unique contribution to global ophthalmology for the benefit of mankind”. It will be inscribed with the recipient’s name, who will receive the scaled maquette of the piece for their possession.
UKISCRS is honoured to bestow the first award to Professor Robert Rejdak, Professor and Chairman, Department of General Ophthalmology, Medical University of Lublin and Executive Director of the ESASO Research Center, Lublin, Poland for his outstanding achievements in ophthalmology and his humanitarian efforts to restore vision to those injured through war in Ukraine.
