Dame Helen Danesh-Meyer: inner vision

New Zealand’s only female professor of ophthalmology, who has ranked among the top 100 ophthalmologists globally, became a dame for her services to eye health in the King’s New Year Honours.

Behind that achievement was the influence of her mother, who inspired her career and helped shape her success.

Mahtaban Danesh was among the first women to qualify as a doctor in Iran, says Dame Helen, and provided the steadfast practical support and wise advice that made it possible for her daughter to become a world leader in neuro-ophthalmology.

“My mother was my inspiration. She was a strong, formidable woman,” says Dame Helen.

Dame Helen’s research, across the University’s Department of Ophthalmology and Centre for Brain Research, is focused on neuro-ophthalmology, at the interface between the eye and the brain.

She spends the other half of her working life as a practising ophthalmologist and eye surgeon, specialising in glaucoma and brain tumours, at Greenlane Hospital and the Eye Institute.

It is work that she clearly feels passionate about.

“Going into an eye clinic, I realised sight is the most precious of all the senses and ophthalmologists have the honour of making a big difference in people’s lives,” she says.

Medicine in the blood

Dame Helen’s parents fell in love while both were studying medicine in Iran, but women like Mahtaban faced significant social and institutional restrictions in the country.

“When I was born, my mother didn’t want to raise me there, because she wanted me to have different opportunities,” she says. 

When Dame Helen was two years old, her family moved to the US, where her father, Ali, worked as a psychiatrist focused on addiction in Native American communities. Even though Mahtaban had been a star medical student, she sacrificed her career as an obstetrician and gynaecologist to raise their three children. 

When Dame Helen was 15 years old, the family moved to New Zealand. She went to high school in Dunedin, then studied medicine at Otago University.

“When I decided to become a doctor, my mother was my biggest advocate, making sure I had the opportunity to develop my own potential,” she says.

Pursuing ‘inner vision’

While the sheer complexity of the eye and brain attracted Dame Helen to study neuro-ophthalmology at the University of Auckland, a crisis in her family also sculpted her path.

When she was about 20 years old, her father suffered a brain injury in a serious car accident and was in a coma for three months. She kept hoping his brilliant mind would return, but he became a different person after the crash. He was 49 years old at the time and never recovered enough to return to work.

“I had always been interested in the brain, but that gave me a personal passion and fuel for exploring brain injuries and recovery,” she says.

In 1998, Dame Helen was offered two fellowships, in neuro-ophthalmology and glaucoma, at the prestigious Wills Eye Hospital in the US. By this time, she had married periodontist Michael Danesh-Meyer and had recently given birth to the first of their two daughters. Mahtaban’s help made it possible for Dame Helen to take up the fellowships that provided a springboard for her career.

In the US, she began using new scanning laser cameras to examine the thickness of the optic nerve, as a method of diagnosing glaucoma.

Dame Helen needed the kind of determination she learned from her mother when she began exploring whether laser images from inside the eye might also be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease.

“Some of my colleagues thought it was a far-fetched idea and initially I had grant applications turned down, with comments that the research was ‘too blue sky’.”

Undeterred, she forged ahead with a groundbreaking study that found clear links between loss of thickness of optic nerve fibres and loss of cognitive ability in patients with Alzheimer’s.

Her research, published in Neurology in 2006, ended up shifting global paradigms, as it revealed that the eye offers vital insights into the health of the brain. Other researchers went on to use similar techniques of measuring optic nerve thickness to develop a widely used test for diagnosing multiple sclerosis.

“I learned that if your inner vision says something is worth pursuing, it deserves your trust.” 

‘Windows’ into the brain

She hopes her research will one day lead to non-invasive scans of the eye being used to help pick up the early stages of brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.

In an embryo, the eyes develop as an outgrowth of the brain, she explains. The retina and optic nerve are part of the central nervous system, making them perfect ‘windows’ into the brain.

Dame Helen also needed the courage of her convictions when she pushed ahead with research into the reasons some patients experience severe vision problems, despite no abnormalities showing up on eye scans using optical coherence tomography.

Peers thought this was due to a glitch in the new technology or that patients were exaggerating their symptoms.

She found that in some cases, patients with normal eye scans had brain tumours that were pressing on the optic nerve, causing vision loss. Her team found that if the tumour was removed early, while the optic nerve was still a healthy thickness, the nerve could bounce back and patients’ sight could be restored.

In the years following her father’s accident, her interest in brain injuries has led to research that she hopes could fundamentally change the way concussion is diagnosed and treated. Using high-speed eye cameras, her team has shown that people with concussion display abnormal eye movements, which change as they recover.

“Eye movement could eventually be used to diagnose concussion and other brain conditions, such as dementia, and to monitor people’s responses to treatments.”

A passion for helping others

Her father’s accident also taught her how it feels to sit in medical waiting rooms with a family member.

“My father’s experience has helped shape the doctor I am,” she says.

“I know my patients have waited a long time to see me and, for them, their eye is the most important eye.”

Her mother’s passion for women’s rights continues to burn brightly in Dame Helen, who helped found Women in Vision, an organisation that fosters professional and personal growth among female ophthalmologists.

Seeing unmet patient needs drove her to help found Glaucoma New Zealand, a charity that supports people with glaucoma, offering education and advocacy.

She founded and leads the Vision Research Foundation, which supports New Zealand vision researchers working at the forefront of their field, and is also the president of the Neuro-Ophthalmology Society of Australia – the first New Zealander to hold the role.

When she first received an email informing her that she was to be made a dame at an official ceremony later this year, she checked if the missive was spam. Now she is delighted by the honour and hopes it shines light on causes she cares about, although she insists others have been vital to her success.

“My damehood reflects teams, mentors, patients and a fair bit of stubborn persistence,” she says.

- Rose Davis