Speaker Biography

During his final year at Bristol University medical school David Yorston visited Mvumi Hospital, in central Tanzania. There he met Allen Foster, who inspired him to become a missionary ophthalmologist, and return to East Africa. Following his residency at the Bristol Eye Hospital, he worked at Mvumi Hospital for five years, then moved to Nairobi, as a regional advisor for Christoffel Blindenmission, and to help develop Kikuyu Eye Unit, just outside Nairobi.

At Kikuyu, they had the support of consultants from Moorfields Eye Hospital. Regular visits by Dr Zden Gregor helped them to set up the first retinal clinic in E. Africa. Dr Yorston also established regular cataract surgery services in the refugee camps in Dadaab, and across the border in Somalia and S. Sudan. In his role as ophthalmic advisor for CBM, he helped to develop guidelines for prevention of blindness programmes, and served on WHO committees on childhood blindness, and intraocular lenses in low and middle income countries.

After 15 years in E. Africa, he returned to the UK as a resident, and then vitreoretinal fellow, at Moorfields Eye Hospital. In 2005 he was appointed as a consultant in Glasgow. There he has been the PI for several clinical trials, and helped to develop a simple low cost method for measuring metamorphopsia.

He has been involved with Euretina/BEAVRS database since its inception, as part of the committee that designed the datasets for retinal detachment and macular hole. The Euretina/BEAVRS database was established a little over a decade ago, as an online anonymised audit tool. This allows vitreoretinal surgeons to show that their anatomical outcomes are comparable with their peers, and to collect data on presenting features and outcomes of retinal detachments and macular holes. Currently there are more than 15,500 retinal detachments and 5,000 macular holes recorded in the database. Over 90 ophthalmologists have contributed data. Since 2021, analysis of the database has contributed to nine published papers, and more are in preparation.

Dr Yorston served as president of the Britain & Eire Vitreoretinal Society (BEAVRS) from 2019 to 2021, and on the Training Committee of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists. He has over 100 publications in PubMed.

He is married to Heather, a lecturer in maths and computer science at Edinburgh University, whose expertise in machine learning is being applied to analysis of the Euretina database. When not hunched over his laptop, Dr Yorston can be found hiking in the mountains of Scotland and the Alps, or attending St Silas church in Glasgow.