Your browser is unsupported

We recommend using the latest version of IE11, Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

Search

Department of Medicine

UI Health is UIC’s academic health enterprise
View Menu Down arrow icon

Patricia Era Bath, MD

Ophthalmologist
Inventor, laser scientist, a humanitarian and academic

Patricia Era Bath, MD

The Department of Medicine Inclusion Council honors and celebrates thelife and accomplishments of Patrica Era Bath, MD, (November 4, 1942 -May 30, 2019). Dr. Bath may be best known for her invention calledLaserphaco Probe a device and technique for cataract surgery. She alsobecame the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute. Bath wasthe first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medicalpurpose. A holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profitAmerican Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.

She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., interned at Harlem Hospital from1968 to 1969, and completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University from 1969 to 1970. Patricia Bath was the firstAfrican American to complete an ophthalmology residency with New York University’s School of Medicine, in 1973. Two years later,the UCLA School of Medicine appointed her as the first female faculty member in its department of ophthalmology. Believing that“eyesight is a basic human right,” Dr. Bath went on to co-found the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in 1977, anorganization whose mission is to protect, preserve, and restore the gift of sight.

Interning in New York City in the 1960s sparked a revelation for Patricia Era Bath, MD. Bath, noticing that rates of blindness andvisual impairment were much higher at the Harlem Hospital’s eye clinic, which served many Black patients, than at the eye clinic atColumbia University, which mostly served whites. That observation spurred her to conduct a study that found twice the rate ofblindness among African-Americans compared with whites. Throughout the rest of her career, Bath explored inequities in visioncare. She created the discipline of community ophthalmology, which approaches vision care from the perspectives of community medicine and public health.

Bath in her home office, 1994.
Bath in her home office, 1994.
In the early 1980s, Bath studied laser technology and saw its potential for eyesurgery. In 1986, she invented the Laserphaco probe, a device and method forcataract treatments. When she patented the instrument, in 1988, she becamethe first African American female doctor to receive a patent for a medicalinvention.
By 1983 she was chair of the ophthalmology residency training program atDrew-UCLA, the first woman in the US to hold such a position. In 1993, Bathretired from UCLA Medical Center and was appointed to the honorary medicalstaff. After that, she advocated for telemedicine, to provide medical services toremote areas.
Benjamin
Dr. Bath was also recognized for her philanthropic work in the field of ophthalmology byPresident Barack Obama. In 2009, she was put on his commission for digital accessibility to blindchildren.
Dr. Bath’s greatest passion, however, continued to be fighting blindness until her death. Her “personal best moment” occurred on a humanitarian mission to North Africa, when she restoredthe sight of a woman who had been blind for thirty years by implanting a keratoprosthesis.”Theability to restore sight is the ultimate reward,” she said.