Dr Richard Packard
High Wire Act to the Standard of Care – Charlie Kelman and the History of Phacoemulsification
Richard Packard MD DO FRCS FRCOphth FEBOS-CR
Richard Packard retired as senior consultant at Arnott Eye Associates in London in 2022. He had been surgeon at the internationally renowned Prince Charles Eye Unit in Windsor, England.
He qualified as a doctor in 1970 from the Middlesex Hospital Medical School after residency at Moorfields Eye Hospital. He went in December 1978 as Senior Registrar at Charing Cross Hospital working under Eric Arnott and he first started to perform phacoemulsification in 1979.
In 1981 he published the first description in the medical literature of the use of a folded soft lens in cataract surgery.
Since then, he continued to teach phaco techniques as well as being involved in the development of new intraocular lenses, phaco machines and other instrumentation and has lectured in over 60 countries.
He was a board member of ESCRS from 1999 – 2007. He has chaired the ESCRS Video Competition Judging Panel since 2000. He is on the society’s Education Committee and runs the Cataract Surgery Didactic Course.
He has given many named lectures including the IIIC Medal lecture for 2014; the ESCRS Binkhorst Lecture in 2015; the Fyodorov and King Khaled memorial lectures in 2018 and the UKISCRS Choyce Medal Lecture in 2021.
In 2018 he was the Honored Guest of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.
In 2019 he published with Lucio Buratto The History and Evolution of Modern Cataract Surgery. In 2020 they published The History of Refractive Surgery.