Schepens Eye Research Institute Honors Dr. Tatsuo Hirose at 60th Anniversary Celebration on Thursday, October 21, 2010

BOSTON, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Tatsuo Hirose will receive the Schepens Eye Research Institute 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award at the Annual Meeting on Friday, October 22, 2010.  

He will also be honored at the Institute's 60th anniversary celebration event, which will take place the evening before at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at 776 Boylston Street in Boston and will feature a cocktail hour, dinner and performances by singers Danya Katok and Matthew Anderson.

Founded in 1950 by the father of modern retinal surgery, Dr. Charles Schepens, the Institute has been leading the world in research to eliminate blinding eye disease and is on the verge of finding treatments and cures for the millions worldwide suffering from diseases such as macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and glaucoma, among others.

Dr. Hirose, who did a postdoctoral vitreoretinal fellowship at the Institute in 1969 when it was known as the Retina Foundation, was chosen for special recognition on this milestone anniversary because of his lifetime dedication to the care of people with retinal diseases and injuries. World renowned for his expertise in the human retina, he specializes in the treatment of both the adult and pediatric retina. He is most known for his treatment of Retinopathy of Prematurity (in the advanced stage), children's retinal diseases, complicated retinal detachments, and Stickler Syndrome.

Dr. Hirose came to the Schepens Eye Research Institute in 1969 from Kanazawa University, Japan, where he received his MD and did his internship and residency in ophthalmology.  He then went on to complete general ophthalmology courses at Harvard Medical School.

His postgraduate studies also included a fellowship in electrophysiology at Cornell Medical Center, New York and a clinical fellowship in the Retina Service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston. 

He is board certified in ophthalmology and is currently a Clinical Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; a Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School; and Surgeon in Ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Dr. Hirose has received numerous awards for exceptional work in his field.  Some of these are as follows:  Fulbright Fellowship; Honor Award and Senior Award of the American Academy of Ophthalmology; selected in The Best Doctors in America; selected Boston's Best Doctors, Boston Magazine; The Paul Kayser International Award of Merit in Retina Research; Rofeh's Lillian and Harry Andler Memorial Award; named W. Clement Stone Clinical Research Scholar at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, and received the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary Distinguished Service Award.

In addition to his distinguished career as a surgeon and professor, Dr. Hirose has published 160 original peer-reviewed papers.  He has developed surgical techniques for severe retinal detachments, retinopathy of prematurity, giant retinal tears and proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR).  He has also developed clinically useful objective retinal function tests, including local macular ERG-VER, electrically evoked responses (EER), and infant vision testing, particularly in those infants with low vision.  Dr. Hirose operated on a large number of infants with a severe type of retinal detachment associated with retinopathy of prematurity and evaluated their vision quantitatively after the surgeries and proved that the surgery could save vision in some infants with severe retinal detachments.

Schepens Eye Research Institute is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School and the largest independent eye research institute in the country.

SOURCE Schepens Eye Research Institute