2012 José I. Barraquer Lecture and Award:
Dr. Günther Grabner

Günther Grabner, MD, graduated in medicine in 1974 from the University of Vienna Medical School and started working at the Second University Eye Clinic in May 1975. He is the founder of Austria’s first Eye Bank (1977). In 1981/1982, he was a corneal and uveitis fellow at the Francis I. Proctor Foundation (University of California, San Francisco). Following his return to Austria, he started the cornea and uveitis units of the clinic and was appointed associate professor in 1983. He started a center for “refractive corneal surgery” in 1985 and received an associate professorship from the medical faculty in 1990. In January 1993, he was appointed director and full professor at the Eye Clinic of the Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, where he has been working since.

Dr. Grabner is a member of several national and international scientific societies, vice president of the Salzburger Ärztegesellschaft, member of “IIIC,” member for ten years of the Council of the European Society of Ophthalmology (SOE) and the steering committee of the KPro Study Group. A member of the Austrian Ophthalmological Society (ÖOG) since 1975, he was elected permanent scientific secretary for a period of six years, re-elected in 2005, and elected president from 2009 to 2011. He served on the editorial board of International Ophthalmology Clinics (1983-1997), Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (1990-2005), and continues with the Journal of Refractive Surgery and Der Ophthalmologe. He is editor of Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde and coeditor of Spektrum der Augenheilkunde.

To date, Dr. Grabner has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters, received several awards and given numerous invited lectures and courses at national and international meetings. His current research interests focus on corneal and intraocular presbyopia and astigmatism surgery with implants and lasers, development of a system to precisely assess near visual acuity (the Salzburg Reading Desk), keratoprosthesis surgery, glaucoma epidemiology (the Salzburg Glaucoma Study) and glaucoma and IOL implant surgery.