Dr. Lloyd M. Aiello, a pioneer in laser treatment, has helped diabetics retain their sight. “Our goal is to preserve the vision in the retina that you came into the world with,’’ he says.
(Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)
DR. LLOYD M. AIELLO | G Force
An eye to the future
Dr. Lloyd M. Aiello, a pioneer in laser treatment, has helped diabetics retain their sight. “Our goal is to preserve the vision in the retina that you came into the world with,’’ he says.
(Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)
Before 1921, the year insulin was discovered, few diabetics lived long enough to suffer complications of the disease. Before 1967, few who had a complication called proliferative diabetic retinopathy avoided blindness. That was the year ophthalmologist Dr. Lloyd M. Aiello and his father-in-law, Dr. William P. Beetham of the Joslin Diabetes Center experimented with lasers to counteract leaking blood vessels in the retina. Aiello, 77, recently won this year’s Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for developing the pioneering therapy still in use today. We spoke with Dr. Aiello by phone.
ELIZABETH COONEY
Q. What was the outlook for your patients in the 1960s?
A. Each year 50 percent of my patients became blind and each year 50 percent of my patients died. Anyone with proliferative diabetic retinopathy was called a one-guide-dog patient because they went blind and died in five years [from related damage to other organs]. You can work a guide dog for five years, but they never needed a new guide dog.
Q. What prompted you to attempt laser treatment?
A. If somebody had congenital eye disease, or if they had infections, when they went into remission they formed these scars. There was no retinopathy between the scars, so we said, we think we want to create scars like that and leave the untreated retina in between.
Q. In 1967, did you ever dream the technique would still be in use today?
A. I didn’t expect 40 years later, not to have a new treatment. Either somebody’s asleep at the switch or it’s pretty hard to treat this disease.
Q. Your work, with your late father-in-law and now your son, Dr. Lloyd P. Aiello, has been a family affair.
A. I asked him at [the prize] presentation, when are you going to wrap this up so I can retire? He’s working on a novel therapy that may really push us in a new direction. [Laser treatment] is still a destructive technique, no matter how you look at it. Our goal today is not to prevent blindness. Our goal is to preserve the vision in the retina that you came into the world with.
Q. What are you working on now?
A. I’m doing telemedicine through the Joslin Vision Network. Telemedicine is an eye care program that is the practice of medicine from a distance, not consulting from a distance.
Q. What about retirement?
A. I won’t retire until I can access every patient wherever they may be in the world. I doubt that I’m going to do that in my lifetime, so I’m starting to teach young people so they can carry on.
Interview was condensed and edited. 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
