Cynthia Ann Toth

Cynthia Ann Toth is an American ophthalmologist who is Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology at Duke University. Toth has pioneered the use of optical coherence tomography to better understand, diagnose and treat macular disease. She was awarded the 2021 Retina Research Foundation Pyron Award.

Early life and education Toth earned her medical degree at Drexel University. She was the first person in her family to become a doctor. She moved to the Geisinger Medical Center and University of California, Davis for postgraduate study. After her residency, she joined the United States Air Force and served as an ophthalmologist in the field. After working in the Air Force, Toth decided she wanted to specialize in the retina, and moved to Wilford Hall Medical Centre as Chief of the Retina Service.

Toth demonstrated that macular translocation surgery could provide salvage therapy to people who had lost vision due to neovascular AMD, which resulted in the opportunity to auto-transplant the retina. Her efforts have proven that OCT performed at the bedside in neonatal intensive care units can help to identify infants with vision and neurodevelopment problems and micro-anatomic response to interventions.

Toth developed portable OCT to image during surgery, and the first OCT-driven stereoscopic heads-up display (HUD) that can visualize surgical information in a microscope. In 2021, she was awarded the Retina Research Foundation Pyron Award and listed in the Global Ophthalmology Power List.

Selected publications