Physician Profile

Richard W. Hertle, MD, joined Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 2004 as chief of the new Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology and director of the Laboratory of Visual and Ocular Motor Physiology. He is also a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the UPMC Eye Center at The Pittsburgh Eye and Ear Institute.

Dr. Hertle comes to Children's from Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio, where he was director of the pediatric ophthalmology fellowship program. He earned a bachelor's degree at Ohio State University in 1979 and his medical degree in 1984 at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. After internships and fellowships at hospitals in Ohio, he was an ophthalmology resident at Boston University Medical Center from 1986-89. He was a pediatric ophthalmology fellow at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia until 1991. From 1989-92, he was first clinical instructor, then lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Department of Ophthalmology. He was assistant professor of ophthalmology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine from 1992-98.

Dr. Hertle worked from 1998-2001 as medical officer/investigator and senior scientist in pediatric ophthalmology, strabismus and eye movement disorders in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. While at the NIH, he was a consultant in pediatric ophthalmology at the National Naval Medical Center and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dr. Hertle has been principal investigator on a number of NIH-funded research projects, including ongoing studies on the treatment of nystagmus - involuntary, usually side-to-side movements of the eyeballs, strabismus - in which the eyes are out of line relative to one another, and amblyopia - a vision weakness often referred to as "lazy eye."