Some Less Important Use of Ultrasound in Ophthalmology

Abstract

In 1966 at the Münster Symposium Prof. Arvo Oksala a pioneer in ultrasound diagnostics mentioned all the fields in which ultrasound could be used in his review based on the 173 papers already published at that time: ‘... intraocular tumors, vitreous opacities, intraocular foreign body, detachment of the Retina and the Choroid and between other pathological conditions: diseases of the orbit, exophthalmos, lids, lens...’. This Congress has shown the advances made in the past 14 years. If one examines the enormous amount of existing ultrasound literature it is evident that pathology of the lids and lacrimal sac is the least considered. In fact one must go back to 1959 and 1960 to find two papers by Oksala about the use of ultrasound in a case of chalazion and in an acute dacryocystitis. The author himself mentions them as curiosities but points out how, even in that case, ultrasound examination could give some comprehensible and meaningful answer.