Studies of two treatment techniques for glaucoma—one still under clinical investigation and the other reexamined after two decades or more of use—were reported to ophthalmologists.
The technique for which further clinical investigation is planned was reported from University Hospitals, Western Reserve University, by Richard S. Rosenberg, MD, and Edward W. Purnell, MD. It involves ultrasonic radiation used first on rabbits and then on six patients.
The other is one of two methods of destroying the ciliary body in glaucoma by heat; the electrical heat technique called cyclodiathermy. The study was reported by G. Thomas Kiffney, Jr., MD, University of North Carolina School of Medicine and McPherson Hospital, Durham, NC.
Dr. Rosenberg, a research fellow in ophthalmology, said the six patients treated with ultrasonic radiation in Cleveland had absolute glaucoma under maximal medical management and "vision in all six treated eyes was nil."
A quartz transducer, looking not unlike a fountain