"Huh, Huh, so what's new today?"
Blog vol 3. 17 "Huh, Huh, so what's new today?"
He had just retired as head of the University of Bern’s Eye Clinic, where he presided from 1935 to 1968, when in 1969 he spent a year sabbatical at Washington University’s Eye Clinic in St. Louis Missouri. Dr. Hans Goldmann, who was born in 1899 in Bohemia, would appear in the mornings and greet the faculty and students with, "Huh, Huh, so what's new today?"
His work in glaucoma research and in developing new eye testing techniques are lauded to this day. We still use the Goldmann tonometer, which is the gold standard in measuring eye pressure, and the Goldmann field perimeter, which measures visual field.
I have written several articles on bioptic driving and telescopes. Many of my patients who have presented for possible bioptic use have an eye condition called nystagmus, where the eyes weave back and forth searching for a better reference point.
In the 1970s automatic perimeters replaced the manual Goldmann variety. Problem is that the automatic variety cannot account for the eye movement of my nystagmus patients, and that is real trouble when a reliable and accurate measure of a potential driver’s peripheral vision is required.
Dr. Tabone, who practices with us, suggested that we look into getting a Goldmann perimeter for these patients. That was early July, and I found one that, originally made and designed in Switzerland, was sitting on a hospital bed in Vernon Hills, Illinois, and not in a museum for ophthalmology. I purchased it and had it shipped to a family friend in East Aurora, New York because the supplier could not ship outside the USA. It then sat in a warehouse, for about a month as I figured out how to get it across the border to my office in Burlington. It was with much elation when, on an August morn, I received my Goldmann perimeter and have been working on getting it operational since.
As the emperor in Star Wars says, “Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!”
It feels like that, now that we have the Goldmann perimeter operational. It has been a long process but much needed. The bioptic telescope makes it possible to see at least the 20/50 line on the eye chart, but that is not the most important visual task when it comes to getting around. It is your peripheral vision, and unless the driver has at least 120 degrees of visual field in the horizontal, they cannot responsibly drive a motor vehicle. The Goldmann perimeter measures the degree of field definitively for all patients.
So as Dr. Goldmann, used to say when he was doing his rounds at Wash U, "Huh, Huh, so what's new today?"
The answer is something that has been brought back and made new once again, the Goldmann perimeter for the patients and potential bioptic drivers that make it to Burlington Eyecare.
til next week,
the good doctor
