Roberto Zaldivar became the first foreigner to receive the top prize in ophthalmology in the United States

The prestigious Argentine physician Roberto Zaldivar was awarded today in Washington with the Steinert Refractive Lecture Award, awarded by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS), one of the most recognized institutions in the world in this area of medicine.

Zaldivar was awarded for his valuable contributions to refractive surgery during his career and became the first non-American physician to receive the distinction awarded in memory of Roger Steinert, professor at Harvard University. This is one of the most prestigious awards in ophthalmology in the world.

The Argentine doctor is internationally recognized as the “father” of intraocular phakic lenses (ICL), a technique most used today in the world to correct high myopias.

The Steinert Refractive Lecture Award is the highest award given by ASCRS to experts who make significant contributions to the specialty. The name honors the prestigious physician Roger Steinert, an eminence of American ophthalmology, who died in 2017. Before Dr. Zaldivar he was received by four doctors, all of them Americans.

In dialogue with Infobae moments after the examination, the prestigious Argentine doctor said he was very excited. “It is one of the most important awards I have ever received”, which consists of a medal and a “very important conference showing life, education, family and career” of the winner, he said, so it became a very emotional ceremony, he said.

Zaldivar was the central speaker during the ASCRS Annual Conference, which this year is being held in Washington, and in which more than 5,000 ophthalmologists from around the world participate. In that context, he received the award.

“This award represents great recognition for Argentinian and Latin American ophthalmology. Being valued for contributing contributions that change the lives and vision of people around the world is a great satisfaction,” Zaldivar said after the award ceremony.

In this context, he considered in dialogue with this media that “Argentinian ophthalmology is very advanced, very good” worldwide and the same is true of “many niches (of the specialty) in Latin America”. In this regard, he stressed that “the biggest problem is the collection of scientific data and the presentation of information” that is carried out on the continent and that it is an item that affects medicine in general.

“If there is one thing that our countries need to improve, it is how (scientific) studies are conducted, how data are collected” and, although there are very serious studies, “the amount is not comparable” with other regions of the planet. “When Argentina and Latin America manage to collect credible information, they will take a very big leap because capacity has it and there will be very good results,” he said.

Regarding the advances expected in ophthalmology in the coming years, he said that new techniques are being seen for “treatment of the retina, glaucoma, which is eye pressure, and also in my specialty which is cataract and refractive,” he added. In his case, he said, he is working to “improve current technology, to improve performance”, although it is “not at all disruptive”, he said, in the coming years techniques in the area of refractive ophthalmology and cataract will be improved, he said.

The doctor from Mendoza was a pioneer in different visual correction techniques applied throughout the world. It is the world leader in the implantation of intraocular contact lenses (ICL), the most widely used technique today to correct upper myopias. Another valuable contribution to world ophthalmology was the description of the Bioptics technique in 1996, which combines the LASIK technique (laser) and the ICL phakic lens, an unprecedented step that allowed the treatment of thousands of patients with high optical defects.

Zaldivar performed the first ICL lens surgery in the world. That milestone occurred in Mendoza in 1993. In these 30 years he has participated in most technological developments in technology.

The ICL, which is implanted inside the eye without the need to touch or remove the lens, marked a before and after in world ophthalmology due to its ability to correct great optical effects, since it is able to correct up to 20 diopters of myopia and 6 diopters of astigmatism.

Globally, in recent years, there has been a boom in the adoption of this technique due to the great growth of cases of myopia globally. Around 2 million people have opted for the ICL. It is currently the most advanced technique for treating high myopia and with the highest satisfaction rate in patients (99%). Because of its very high effectiveness, the ICL is positioned as a Gold Standard in the world.

In 2020, Zaldivar was chosen among the 100 most influential ophthalmologists in the world by the prestigious British magazine The Ophthalmologist. In addition to the award he just received in Washington, he won numerous international distinctions for his substantial contributions to ophthalmology, in particular to refractive surgery.

The Argentine doctor leads the Zaldivar Institute created by his father, Roger Eleazer Zaldivar, in 1959. The institution, with the incorporation of his son Roger Zaldivar, has been reinventing, updating and improving for three generations, for three generations, and has been constantly reinventing, updating and improving itself in order to achieve ever more accurate results and be at the forefront of the latest in ophthalmology. The vision of Instituto Zaldivar is to be a model organization in ophthalmology in the world, to improve the quality of life of all people. In more than 60 years of experience, innovation in surgical technology, he has performed more than 150,000 surgeries.

In parallel, the Zaldivar Foundation, created in 1990, and currently chaired by Roger and Mercedes Zaldivar, is a non-profit institution whose mission is the ophthalmological care of children and adults who lack medico-social coverage.

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