Dr Arnall Patz

Medical Pioneer. An ophthalmologist, he discovered, during the early-1950s, the etiology of and prevention for retrolental fibroplasia, a then-common cause of blindness in newborns. Raised in rural Georgia, he received his undergraduate degree from Atlanta's Emory University, then earned his M.D. from the same school in 1945. After three years service in the US Army, he became an ophthalmology resident at Washington's Gallinger Municipal Hospital (now, D.C. General Hospital); one frustrating problem of the time was the large number (among them, singer Stevie Wonder) of premature infants, and only premature infants, who were becoming blind from retrolental fibroplasia (now called retinitis of prematurity, or ROP), an overgrowth of retinal blood vessels. Dr. Patz, along with his associate Dr. Leroy Hoeck, postulated that the continuous high oxygen levels in sealed incubators might be the cause; against much opposition (some said that the doctors were going to "kill babies"), they ran what is thought to be the first ever randomized study in ophthalmology in which 12 of 60 infants maintained on high oxygen went blind, while but one of the 60 who were only given oxygen when in respiratory distress did. Their 1952 trial was reproduced on a larger scale with similar results, earning Dr. Patz and Dr. Everett Kinsey the 1956 Albert Lasker Award, and saving the sight of thousands of people. He accepted a part-time position at Johns Hopkins University in 1955, while continuing a private practice; in the late 1960s, he was the first to use the argon laser to treat diabetic retinopathy and other retinal conditions. Dr. Patz joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1970, and was director of the Wilmer Eye Institute from 1979 until taking emeritus professor status in 1989. His honors, besides the Lasker, were many, including the 1980 Friedenwald Research Award, the Isaac C. Michaelson Medal (1986), the 1994 first award of the Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by President Bush in 2004. A ham radio operator, he ran one of the early networks to match donated corneas with recipients; always desiring to learn, he received a liberal arts degree from Johns Hopkins at 78, with one of his term papers devoted to the question of how deafness affected Beethoven's later compositions. Dr. Patz died of heart disease.