Svyatoslav Fyodorov

Svyatoslav Nikolayevich Fyodorov (Russian: Святослав Николаевич Фёдоров; born August 8, 1927 – June 2, 2000) was a Russian ophthalmologist, politician, professor, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. He is considered to be the father of the refractive surgery.

Life and career

Fyodorov was born in Proskurov, Ukrainian SSR (now Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine), to ethnic Russian parents. Fyodorov graduated from Rostov Medical Institute in Rostov on Don, then worked as a practicing ophthalmologist in a small town in Rostov Oblast. In 1960 he performed the first intraocular lens replacement operation, inventing the cure to the cataract. In 1973 he developed a new surgical technique to cure the early stage of the glaucoma, called Scleroplasty. Il 1974 he developed the surgical technique he is most famous for, the radial keratotomy, to change the shape of the cornea and cure the myopia.^[1] In 1986, Fyodorov designed the first posterior chamber phakic IOL in the "collar-button" or "mushroom" configuration and manufactured the pIOL from silicone. In 1980 he became the head of the Moscow Research Institute of Eye Microsurgery. In 1988 he founded the Fyodorov Eye Microsurgery Complex. Fyodorov was a member of the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989-1991. He was elected to the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, in 1993. He ran for president in 1996.^[2]

Death

Returning from an academic conference in 2000, Fyodorov died in the crash of his clinic's four-seater helicopter on the outskirts of Moscow.

In 2013, a profile of Dr. Fyodorov was included in a bestselling book called Saving Sight: An eye surgeon's look at life behind the mask and the heroes who changed the way we see, by Andrew Lam, M.D.^[3]

References