Dr. M. Bruce Shields, who was named professor and chair of the department of ophthalmology and visual science at the School of Medicine last fall, has been named the first recipient of the Marvin L. Sears Professorship by vote of the Yale Corporation. Dr. Shields is also chief of ophthalmology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Drs. Shields and Sears, who are both internationally known leaders in their field, share a professional interest in the multifaceted problem of glaucoma, a condition in which individuals lose their vision because of abnormally high pressure in the eye. There are more than 100 types of glaucoma, and approximately 10 percent of the population suffers from it.
Dr. Shields joined the Yale medical facility last November after serving 22 years as a faculty member in the department of ophthalmology at Duke University, staff surgeon at the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and a consultant at the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center in Asheville. He held these positions since 1974, when he had completed three years of residency training in ophthalmology at Duke.
Dr. Shields received a B.S. in 1962 from Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, and a M.D. in 1966 from Oklahoma University School of Medicine. He took a one-year rotating internship at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Philadelphia and served three years in the U.S. Navy, being discharged in 1970 as a lieutenant commander. He also took a fellowship in glaucoma at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston.
During his career, Dr. Shields has centered his clinical practice, research and teaching on glaucoma. He directed Duke's Glaucoma Service; more recently he has been developing glaucoma treatments involving the application of laser technology. Using this technology, he is concentrating on treating the most advanced types of glaucoma.
A prolific author, Dr. Shields has written more than 25 book chapters and 130 scientific journal articles. However, his best-known work is the "Textbook of Glaucoma," which is now in its fourth U.S. edition. It also has been translated into German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.
Active in professional organizations, Dr. Shields currently serves as president of the American Glaucoma Society. He also is a director of the American Board of Ophthalmology, and a member of the program committees for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology.
Dr. Shields, who succeeds Dr. Sears as the department's permanent chair, plans to build on the strengths of the department of ophthalmology and visual science that Dr. Sears created in 1971 and chaired until 1993. During his chairmanship, the Yale Eye Center opened at 330 Cedar St. Here, the Boardman Building houses clinical services, and the Brady Laboratory and Brady Boardman connector provide adjoining space for basic science vision research and visual neurobiology.
Foundations, professional colleagues and patients contributed funds toward establishing the Marvin L. Sears Professorship of Ophthalmology and Visual Science. Dr. Sears, who is now in his 36th year at Yale, continues to teach, treat patients and conduct research. His work in adrenergic pharmacology resulted in the development and approval of timolol, which has become the mainstay for the medical therapy of glaucoma. He also developed two innovative surgical procedures for clot removal and tumor removal from the eye, which are used worldwide.