About the Editor

Amar Agarwal, MS, FRCS, FRCOphth, pioneered Phakonit, which is Phako with a Needle Incision Technology. This technique was popularized as Bimanual Phaco, Microincision Cataract Surgery (MICS), or Microphaco. He is the first to remove cataracts through a 0.7 mm tip with the technique called Microphakonit. He has also discovered No Anesthesia cataract surgery as well as FAVIT, a new technique to remove dropped nuclei. The air pump, which was a simple idea of using an aquarium fish pump to increase the fluid into the eye in bimanual phaco and co-axial phaco, has helped prevent surge. This became the basis for various techniques of forced infusion for small incision cataract surgery.

Dr. Agarwal also discovered a new refractive error called Aberropia. He was the first to do a combined surgery of Microphakonit (700-micron cataract surgery) with a 25-gauge vitrectomy in the same patient, thus hav¬ing the smallest incisions possible for cataract and vitrectomy. He was also the first surgeon to implant a new mirror telescopic IOL (LMI) for patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration.

Dr. Agarwal was the first in the world to implant a glued IOL, in which a posterior chamber IOL is fixed in an eye without any capsules using fibrin glue. The Malyugin ring for small pupil cataract surgery was also modified as the Agarwal modification of the Malyugin ring for miotic pupil cataract surgeries with posterior capsular defects. Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital has done the first anterior segment transplantation in a 4-month-old child with anterior staphyloma. He also has pioneered the technique of IOL Scaffold, in which a three-piece IOL is injected into an eye between the iris and the nucleus to prevent the nucleus from falling down in posterior capsular ruptures. Dr. Agarwal has combined Glued IOL and IOL Scaffold in cases of posterior chamber rupture, where there is no iris or capsular support, and termed the technique Glued IOL Scaffold. Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital has also performed the first glued endocapsular ring in cases of subluxated cataract.

Pre-Descemet’s Endothelial Keratoplasty, or PDEK, was created by Dr. Agarwal. In this technique, the pre–Descemet’s layer and the Descemet’s membrane with endothelium are transplanted en bloc in patients with diseased endothelium. Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital has performed the first contact lens assisted collagen cross linking (CACXL), a new technique for cross linking thin corneas. He has also worked on E DMEK, in which an endoilluminator is used to assist in DMEK surgeries. Dr. Agarwal has designed a new instrument called the trocar anterior chamber maintainer, which helps give infusion through the anterior chamber and works like a trocar cannula.

Dr. Agarwal has performed more than 150 live surgeries at various conferences. His videos have won many awards at the film festivals of ASCRS, AAO, and ESCRS. He has also written more than 60 books, which have been published in various languages, including English, Spanish, and Polish. He also trains doctors from all over the world on phaco, bimanual phaco, LASIK and retina. He is Chairman and Managing Director of Dr. Agarwal’s Group of Eye Hospitals, which has 60 eye hospitals all over the world.