David J. Apple

David Joseph Apple , MD (born September 14, 1941 in Alton , Illinois , † August 18, 2011 in Charleston , South Carolina ) was an American ophthalmologist and pathologist whose research focuses on the pathological complications of intraocular lenses and in general ophthalmological Surgery lay. He was also a medical historian and wrote the biography of Sir Harold Ridley , the inventor of the intraocular lens .

origin

David Joseph Apple was born in Alton, Illinois on September 14, 1941 to Joseph and Margaret Bearden Apple. He had a brother, Robert, who was born in 1937 and died in 1994.

Education and professional career

David Apple attended East Alton-Wood River High School in Wood River, Illinois, where he graduated in 1959. He graduated from Northwestern University, University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his internship and residency in pathology from Louisiana State University. In 1980, he completed his residency at the University of Iowa. He was an assistant and then a private professor of ophthalmology at Morton F. Goldberg, MD, at The University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary and Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine in Chicago from 1971 to 1975. He completed his specialist training in clinical ophthalmology under Frederick C. Blodi, MD, at the University of Iowa in 1979.

Apple moved to South Carolina in 1988 to become Professor of Ophthalmology and Pathology, Professor and Chairman of the Storm Eye Institute, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston. He held the Pawek Vallotton Chair in Biomedical Engineering and was Director of the Center of Research on Ocular Therapeutics and Biodevices until 2002. When he headed the Department of Ophthalmology in Charleston from 1988 to 1996, he made successful efforts to raise $ 8.8 million to complete an extension to the third floor and a complete renovation of the eye institute. Upon his return, he resigned from the chair and became director of the research department.

Apple founded the Center for Developing World Ophthalmology while he was Professor of Ophthalmology and Pathology at the Storm Eye Institute, Charleston SC. His laboratory in Charleston (later also: Salt Lake City, Sullivan's Island and Heidelberg) was an official collaboration center of the World Health Organization for prevention programs for the blind. His meeting with World Health Organization Program Director Bjorn Thylefors from the Prevention Blind Department was crucial in providing the World Health Organization with information on what type of IOL to use in cataract surgery in developing countries. Apple wrote about it in 1991.

He returned to Utah in 2002 and moved his Center for Intraocular Lens Research back to Salt Lake City, Utah - the city where he began his IOL research.

What distinguishes his career is that he is the only ophthalmologist to have received four of the most prestigious honors / awards in his field:

1. The Life Achievement Honor Award by the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO)
2. The AAO Ophthalmology Hall of Fame award in 2007
3. The ASCRS Innovator's (Kelman) Award in 2005
4. The Binkhorst Lecture Medal in 1988

In 1998, he was the only American selected to give a guest lecture at the Oxford Ophthalmological Congress, held annually at the University of Oxford. He received the Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) in San Diego, CA.

In 2003 he was accepted into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1990, with co-author Gottfried OH Naumann, he published Pathology of the Eye, a German textbook for eye pathology. He published the English version Pathology of the Eye in 1986.

In 2006 Apple received an award from the International Intra-Ocular Implant Club - the IIIC Medal. On the occasion of Sir Harold Ridley's centenary, he gave a lecture on "Sir Harold Ridley and his Fight for Sight".

Sir Harold Ridley

In the 1980s, Apple in Salt Lake City began researching intraocular lenses (IOLs), including lenses that were removed (explanted) from the eye due to complications. His scientific treatises on IOLs caught the interest of Harold Ridley , the British inventor of the intraocular lens. Ridley and David Apple began exchanging ideas, whereupon Ridley invited Apple to his home near Salisbury, England. This was the beginning of a friendship that greatly helped re-establish and legitimize Ridley's reputation as the inventor of the IOL, and Apple's reputation as a leading researcher in the IOL.

Private life

Apple married Ann Addlestone in 1995 and became the stepfather of Scott E. Kabat and Jacqueline B. Kabat. His brother, Robert V. Apple, had two children, a son, Lee B. Apple, and two daughters, Rana Apple Ford and Dione Apple Badkar, who lived in California. At the end of the 1990s he became seriously ill (he himself correctly diagnosed cancer metastases on the tongue). Between 1999 and 2011, he suffered numerous pneumonia and was hospitalized frequently, the most severe being a cerebral stroke that he suffered two years after moving to Salt Lake City.

In addition to ophthalmology , Apple had a keen interest in classical music - he served on the boards of directors of the Charleston Symphony and the Charleston Ballet Theater, and served in the Chamber Music Charleston . At the same time, he was a lover of military history, specializing in 'World War II' and the 'American Civil War'.

David Apple passed away in Charleston SC on the afternoon of August 19, 2011 . The funeral was held on Sunday, August 21, 2011 at the Beth Elohim Temple and the funeral was held at the Beth Elohim Cemetery , Huguenin Avenue, Charleston SC.

Apple's legacy

• Miyake-Apple technology. This method of dissecting the eye from a corpse was originally developed by David Apple and further developed by Kasatu Miyake MD. The eye is opened from the back to the posterior lens capsule. The anterior segment of the eye is then attached to a camera so that the IOL can be viewed in-situ from behind, as if looking through the lens and cornea from behind. Using this technique, Apple and his colleagues were able to analyze the behavior of different IOLs made of different biomaterials and lens designs.
• The Apple Corps. His most lasting influence is the fact that Apple trained over 200 students and doctors in Charleston and Salt Lake City, and these "students" now occupy key positions in ophthalmic education and practice worldwide. During his active working life, Apple has liked to call his group "The Apple Korps" (a play on words: Apfelkern means Apple-core in English and rhymes with "Korps" in German; and Apple, as an amateur war historian, also thought ironically to Rommel's Africa Corps ). His laboratory was international, his staff and research assistants were recruited from all over the world.
• Research laboratory. When David Apple passed away, the Apple laboratory was located on Sullivan's Island near Charleston, South Carolina. In 2012, the David J Apple International Laboratory for Ocular Pathology moved and was rebuilt in the University of Heidelberg, in the University's Eye Clinic. Gerd U. Auffarth , Medical Director of the University Eye Clinic - former research associate of the Apple Corps - set his plans to set up an international laboratory for intraocular ophthalmic devices / instruments with the aim of continuing and expanding David Apple's research work. The archives, historical explants from the laboratory and Apple's correspondence are stored in the laboratory in Heidelberg.
• Amon-Apple Enhanced Square Edge. This is a barrier for cell proliferation at the transition zone between haptics and optics in one-piece IOLs. The edge design was first developed in 2003 by Peter Toop and Mike Ring, both engineers at IOL manufacturer Rayner Intraocular Lenses Limited, after being advised by Michael Amon, eye surgeon in Vienna, Austria, and David Apple. The aim of this design is to reduce post-cataract formation by creating an unbridgeable physical barrier for cell migration from the haptic surface to the optical surface of the lens. Amon and Apple recognized in 2002 (after doing a study of the Centerflex minus power lenses and a clinical study of the regular strength of the Centerflex lenses) that all modern one-piece injectable IOLs had what Apple called the "Achilles tendon", the haptic-optical transition zone, at this point the IOL has no edge and consequently an incomplete barrier for the development of post-cataracts.

Publications

His publications on IOL studies and his historical overview resulted in the publication of two textbooks: Evolution of Intraocular Lenses in 1985 and Intraocular Lenses. Evolution, Designs, Complications, and Pathology in 1989.

Apple's 2006 biography, Sir Harold Ridley and his Fight for Sight: He changed the world so that we may better see it , appeared after Harold Ridley, the British inventor of the intraocular lens, commissioned David Apple to write his biography.

Apple has presented more than 1,400 science lectures, 168 science posters, and more than 60 exhibits and videos. He authored 566 scientific publications, including 23 textbooks and 71 textbook chapters.

Cross reference

• Harold Ridley (ophthalmologist) • Intraocular lens

Web links

• David J Apple (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} I. H. Fine: A tribute to David J. Apple MD . Eyeworld.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} David J Apple: Sir Harold Ridley and his fight for sight . SLACK incorporated, 2006, ISBN 1-55642-786-7 .
3. ↑ David J Apple, World Health Organization .: Use of intraocular lenses in cataract surgery in developing countries: Memorandum from a WHO meeting . In: Bull WHO . No. 69, 1991, pp. 657-666.
4. ^ Member entry by David Joseph Apple at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on November 22, 2016.
5. ↑ Gottfried OH Nauman, David J Apple: Pathology of the eye . Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 1990, ISBN 978-3-642-96500-5 .