International Congress of Femtosecond Surgery

David Gartry took part in a ‘head to head debate’ on femtosecond laser cataract surgery (he was in favour of this exciting new technology) in the one day ‘Inaugural International Congress of Femtosecond Surgery’ in The Governor’s Hall at St Thomas’ Hospital, London on Friday the 15th of January.

St Thomas’ Hospital, London (Photography David Gartry)

David explained that it was highly appropriate and poignant that the conference was being held at St Thomas’ Hospital since it had always been a very forward thinking institution both in terms of laboratory and clinical research. It was here that Sir Harold Ridley implanted the first plastic lens to replace an opaque cataract lens (in 1949) and where David himself had performed the first UK excimer laser refractive surgery procedure – photorefractive keratectomy (November 1989) working with Professor John Marshall and Mr Malcolm Kerr Muir.

Sir Harold Ridley 1949

Femtosecond surgery refers to the laser used in either laser eye surgery or laser assisted cataract surgery and the name comes from the infrared laser used and it’s wavelength of 1053nm (Femtosecond is one millionth of a nanosecond). Without going into too much detail the use of femtosecond lasers in eye surgery has been a significant innovation in recent years allowing for safer, faster and more accurate treatments. For example many years ago a small blade called a microkeratome was used to create the flap in laser eye surgery – now the procedure is blade-free due to the use of the femtosecond laser which creates the flap and then the excimer laser is used to correct the vision.