Ophthalmic community mourns loss of Thomas D. Lindquist

Issue: April 10, 2016

Thomas D. Lindquist, MD, PhD, renowned cornea transplant surgeon, died March 3 in Maui, Hawaii. He was 66.

Lindquist was the chief of cornea and external diseases at Group Health Cooperative in Redmond, Washington, and was the long-time medical director for SightLife, serving in that capacity since 1987. He previously served as the director of cornea and external service at Virginia Mason Hospital and taught at the University of Washington, according to a biography on SightLife’s website.

Thomas D. Lindquist

Lindquist earned his medical degree and his PhD in physiology from the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences. He completed his ophthalmology residency at the University of Washington and completed his fellowships in cornea/external disease and glaucoma from the University of Minnesota.

Lindquist served in many organizations, including the Cornea Society, American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, American Academy of Ophthalmology and Eye Bank Association of America. He published more than 90 papers and more than 40 book chapters and has co-authored five editions of Ophthalmic Surgery.

He was the recipient of the Eye Bank Association of America’s R. Townley Paton Society Award for Eye Banking in 2009.

Lindquist is survived by his wife, Joan, four children and nine grandchildren.

Tributes to Thomas Lindquist:

Tom Lindquist was very special to me and my wife, Jaci. Tom was one of my fellows when I was at the University of Minnesota directing the Cornea/Anterior Segment Service. He and his close friend Jonathan Rubenstein were both fellows that year. What an amazing combination. They bonded immediately and struck up a lifelong friendship. Both were amazingly talented, dedicated and hardworking. They were also a lot of fun. While I have been blessed with many extraordinary fellows in my 4 decades, these two as a pair were as good as it gets.

Jon went off to Chicago where he now runs the cornea service at Rush Presbyterian, maintains a busy practice, trains his own fellows and has risen to Program Chair of the AAO. I recruited Tom to stay on our faculty at the University of Minnesota. We had an amazing run with Don Doughman, Ed Holland, Tom Lindquist and I all working side by side in a very busy high pathology academic practice. We shared patients, trained residents and fellows together, and performed meaningful research, especially in corneal preservation. These years were for me a slice of heaven.

Richard L. Lindstrom

Unfortunately for us and our program, Tom and his wife, Joan, missed “home.” After a few years they returned to Seattle, where Tom became director of the Cornea Service at the University of Washington and medical director of the then Washington Lions Eye Bank. He later transitioned into private practice, but remained committed to corneal transplantation and eye banking, continuing to serve as medical director of what has evolved into the world’s largest network of eye banks, SightLife. He was committed to its mission of eradicating corneal blindness worldwide and was an active participant for more than 30 years of extraordinary advances in the field.

Tom was a very gentle and kind man, committed to the highest ideals and grounded in his strong Christian faith. He was a very smart, well-trained and experienced clinician and surgeon. His patients loved him, and he cared for them with great skill and grace. He was totally committed to his wife and children, and they always came first, but his patients, practice associates, friends and SightLife were never neglected. A very unique challenge for most of us, he lived a balanced life at peace with himself, his God, those he loved and his life’s work. I will remember Tom as a man who cared deeply for others: family, friends, patients and profession, and he put that caring into action, performing one good deed after another. His was a life worth emulating, and I am blessed to have been a small part of it. Tom, I am proud to have called you friend.

Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, OSN Chief Medical Editor

It is with an extremely heavy heart that I share that SightLife’s Medical Director Thomas D. Lindquist, MD, PhD, has passed away. Dr. Lindquist was on vacation with his wife in Maui, swimming in the ocean, when he suffered what appears to be a fatal cardiac event. Bystanders and ultimately paramedics tried heroically to revive him but were unsuccessful.

This is the biggest loss that we have experienced at SightLife. Having served as our Medical Director since 1987, Dr. Lindquist, Tom or TDL, has been a constant presence of servant leadership, medical excellence, wisdom, faith, and good natured fun. For me personally, Tom has been a model for what I wanted to be in a human, husband and father. As I was struggling to learn fatherhood for my own three young children, I had the blessing of witnessing all four of Tom and his wife Joan’s children work at SightLife as a technician or volunteer. Each of them was hard working, respectful, humbly confident and incredibly talented - reflections of great love from their dad and mom. As a person, Tom was solid in his faith and biblical Christian values and shared a humble unconditional love with each person he dealt with from patients to family to eye bank technicians to CEOs.

In the early years of his service to SightLife, Dr. Lindquist oversaw operations that produced on average about 700 corneas for transplant per year; today we are responsible for over 25,000 corneal transplants per year. Along the way he continued to give generously of his time and wisdom, constantly helping us ensure quality and safety for surgeons and their patients.

In all of his work at SightLife he always brought fun and laughter. Some of my favorite moments with Tom, as I am sure it is with others at SightLife, were enjoying belly laughs with him as he shared funny stories or broke the air with his sometimes corny brand of humor.

In all Tom did he was driven by his faith in Jesus and I know he would want that recognized in any acknowledgment of him. Growing up as the child of missionaries in Africa, Tom was formed with a deep love for humanity and an ability to love people no matter what. Tom was one of those rare people whose actions demonstrated love on a daily basis – an example for us all.

I would ask you all to join me in sending warm thoughts and prayers to Tom’s wife Joan, his children Jennifer and her husband Nate, Tim and his wife Kristen, Peter and his wife Elizabeth, and Andrew and his fiancé Elise, his grandchildren, and all the extended family. While I know they will rejoice in Tom’s eternal home, the grief of his departure will be heavy on their hearts.

As we grieve Tom’s passing and adjust to moving our mission of eliminating corneal blindness forward without him, let us all resolve to honor him with what Dr. Lindquist himself stated was of utmost importance. That everything we do ensures the best in the quality of our work for donor families, surgeons and their patients.

His memorial will be held on Friday, March 18, at 1 p.m. at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle.

Monty Montoya, president and CEO of SightLife