Eric Arnott is credited with bringing modern cataract surgery to Europe. He trained under most of the famous British ophthalmologists of his day, including Sir Harold Ridley and Sir Stewart Duke-Elder.
After opening a consulting practice in London, his extraordinary skills as a surgeon and sensitivity to patients’ needs attracted patients from royalty, politics, and the arts, and he soon became one of the leading consultants in Great Britain.
Arnott’s work with phacoemulsification began almost by accident in 1969, when he and his wife, Veronica, attended the Barraquer Clinical Symposium in Barcelona and met Charles Kelman, MD, who spoke at a fringe meeting about his ultrasonic machine that could be used to remove a cataract through a 3 mm incision. In Arnott’s estimation, Kelman’s idea was as revolutionary as Harold Ridley’s invention of lens implantation.
At that time, Arnott was a leader in British ophthalmology and served as the secretary of Ophthalmologic Society of the United Kingdom. In 1970, Arnott invited Kelman to make a presentation at the Society’s meeting in Oxford, which was the first lecture Kelman gave on phacoemulsification in Europe.
In 1971, Arnott became the first physician outside the US to take the phaco course offered by Charles Kelman, MD, in New York. Also, in 1971, Arnott bought a phaco machine and brought it to London. Later that year he performed the first phaco procedure outside of the US at Charing Cross Hospital, and for several years, he was in the unusual position of being the only surgeon to perform and champion phaco in Europe.
As in the United States, the climate was conservative, and Arnott encountered strong opposition from fellow ophthalmologists when he began to perform the operation.
In 1974, Arnott developed his own phaco course. When he met with Cornelius Binkhorst, MD, he became convinced that combining intraocular lenses implants and phaco was the definitive answer to aphakia. Arnott went on to design and patent a number of intraocular lenses and surgical instruments that gained international acceptance, including the first one piece PMMA lens with flexible haptics. More than any other ophthalmologist, Arnott is credited with guiding European ophthalmology into modern cataract surgery.
Recently Robert Sinskey noted, “Eric was the first Ophthalmologist to perform phaco in England. He gave many courses in Phaco and IOL’s one of which he patented. He and I put together the first live surgical congress in which 26 surgeons from many countries performed cataract with or without IOL from Charing Cross Hospital and beamed it into the Intercontinental Hotel in 1975. He was totally sharing of his new ideas and techniques with his colleagues, which was not common in the 70’s in England.”
Arnott, with the help of his son Stephen, published the critically acclaimed “A New Beginning in Sight,” in September 2006, chronicling the development of modern cataract and refractive surgery.
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