Oskar Hirsch and surgery for exophthalmos.

Despite a better appreciation of the relationship between the eye and the thyroid gland in Graves' disease, the treatment of moderate to severe exophthalmos remains surgical. For many years, standard textbooks recommended a risky, transfrontal approach for exophthalmos that had to be performed by a neurosurgeon. A preferable transantral procedure, which can be performed by a plastic surgeon, was originally described by Oskar Hirsch, a Viennese otorhinolaryngologist, in 1930. Although his technique offers the advantage of causing less morbidity, it was several decades before its merits were widely recognized by practitioners.