In The News

Medical pioneer who saved babies from blindness

Medical pioneer who saved babies from blindness

The death has taken place of Dr. Arnall Patz, whose pioneering research resulted in countless babies being saved from blindness. He was 89.

Dr. Patz’s work resulted in doctors across the world changing their stance on giving premature babies high doses of oxygen in the belief that it was helping them breathe.

In the 1950s Dr. Patz discovered that such high doses of oxygen could cause a form of blindness, now known as Retinopathy or R.O.P. He discovered that the oxygen resulted in the overgrowth of blood vessels in the eye, causing irreparable damage to the retina.

Until Dr. Patz’s breakthrough, doctors had been at a loss to explain why R.O.P. was the most common cause of childhood blindness in many countries.

Dr. Patz went on to do pioneering research involving lasers.

In 2004 President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom (see photo) saying Dr. Patz had “given to uncounted men, women and children the gift of sight”.

He passed away at his home in Pikesville, Maryland.

 

View previous In the News items: Cullybackey community mourns young accident victim, WWI remains identified by experts or Mission Impossible actor dies

 

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