Alistair Adams: ophthalmologist whose inventiveness and dexterity led to a new type of cataract surgery

Alistair Adams, an ophthalmic surgeon, was renowned among friends and colleagues for his imagination and inventiveness. A skilled eye surgeon, he claimed to be the first in Scotland to perform laser surgery for short sightedness, a common procedure today.

“After more than 100 of these procedures, with principled firmness, he concluded that changing the corneal shape for refractive convenience was not the best use of a surgeon’s time,” says Hector Chawla, his long term colleague and collaborator at the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion.

Adams told Scotland on Sunday in 2004 that he was sceptical about techniques to alleviate short sightedness. “I have a question mark over the long term results and I think there may well be complications which we haven’t suspected,” he said.

He instead worked with Chawla to develop a method for small incision cataract surgery that did not require temperamental technology. This was an evolution …