Dr. David L. Guyton

David Guyton has had a career as a problem solver, a clinical innovator, an inventor, a teacher, and a communicator. He followed his grandfather, father, and uncle into medicine, becoming the first of a record ten siblings all physicians. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1969.
After his residency in Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins’ Wilmer Eye Institute and a fellowship in Strabismus with Gunter von Noorden, he returned to Johns Hopkins as the Director of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Adult Strabismus, where he continues to serve as the Zanvyl Krieger Professor of Ophthalmology within the Zanvyl Krieger Children’s Eye Center.
Dr. Guyton’s contributions to clinical optics and strabismus have achieved international recognition. In clinical optics he gave us one of the first automated refractors; the proper techniques for prescribing cylinders, measuring strabismus with prisms, centering corneal surgical procedures, and the Potential Acuity Meter for assessing the potential visual acuity in cataract patients. In strabismus he has given us the exaggerated traction test for assessing oblique muscle tightness, an explanation of oblique muscle overaction and A and V patterns in patients with strabismus, an explanation of the mechanism of dissociated vertical deviation, advanced adjustable suture techniques for strabismus surgery in both adults and children, and theories of how and why strabismus changes over time. .
For more than 30 years Dr. Guyton has been the primary teacher of ophthalmic optics and clinical refraction to ophthalmology residents in the United States. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and has served on the Board of Directors, and as President, of both AAPOS and ARVO.
The most recent of his 300+ publications and 13 U.S. Patents deal with remote optical systems and automated screening devices for detection of strabismus and defocus in infants and children.