UC Davis Eye Center

Celebrating our ophthalmology faculty who were recognized by their patients: Clinician Health & Well being Excellence Award 2020 - Annie Baik, MD The doctor is the happiest doctor I have ever had. She brings joy to the patient environment and seems to incorporate happiness into her work. The world needs more people like her. I'm so glad that she is my doctor with her happy personality and expertise of the eyes.... Excellence Award Honorable Mention - Jeff Caspar, MD Dr. Caspar has provided me extraordinary care for a complex now resolved eye problem. His technical competence combined with empathy and effective communication are top in my experience. Also noteworthy and deserving of celebration are the top 25 specialty care physicians. These providers had the most amount of patient compliments in FY20, collected through the Press Ganey patient surveys. The ophthalmology faculty are: Michele Lim, MD Esther Kim, MD James Brandt, MD Jennifer Li, MD Susanna Park, MD, PhD Jeff Caspar, MD Annie Baik, MD

Today is #GivingTuesday! From collaborative vision research to providing state-of-the-art eye care, there are a billion reasons to give and only a few more hours to make it happen! With friends like YOU, we’ll make a healthier future for Californiaand beyond. https://give.ucdavis.edu/MOPH

Support UC Davis Eye Center on #GivingTuesday 12/1! Your generosity provides health and healing in our region and throughout Northern California. https://give.ucdavis.edu/MOPH

Drs. Caspar and Novack provide a commentary of the multiple standard-of-care, regulatory, and reimbursement issues for the off-label use of intracameral antibiotics at the time of cataractsurgery as prophylaxis for endophthalmitis.

UC Davis is raising awareness of the progressive corneal disease keratoconus in honor of World Keratoconus Day on November 10th! We invite all patients to take a green ribbon and wear it in support on Nov 10! Thank you to the National Keratoconus Foundation and our Fellow doctors at UC Irvine for this call to action. We are all in this together.

Dr. La Torre is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy at the School of Medicine at University of California, Davisand a member of Glaucoma Research Foundation’s third Catalyst for a Cure (CFC) consortium.

UC Davis Ophthalmology & Visual Science faculty Ala Moshiri MD PhD and Gary Novack PhD have an article just posted on-line in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. In this commentary, they discuss the conundrum of today’s treatment of choroidal neovascularization due to macular degeneration (wet AMD). For financial reasons, many ophthalmologists choose to use an off-label treatment that requires a pharmacy to prepare. However, there is risk in this approach compared to using on-label, marketed product manufactured for ophthalmic use. Drs. Moshiri and Novack also highlight the public policy issues around such use, and that is a narrow ledge. Recently, UCD faculty Jeff Caspar MD and Dr. Novack had a similar article on the off-label use of an antibiotic to prevent infection after cataract surgery.

Congratulations to, UC DAVIS EYE CENTER'S faculty member, Dr. Jennifer Li on being the winner of the 2021 R. Townley Paton Award. The R. Townley Paton Award is the Eye Bank Association of America’s highest honor for corneal physicians. This award is presented annually to an ophthalmologist in recognition of her outstanding contribution to eye banking and EBAA. We look forward to your remarks at Eye Bank Association of America and Cornea Society University Cornea and Eye Banking Forum next year! #EyeDonationMonth

UC Davis ophthalmologist Glenn Yiu discovered a new approach to deliver gene therapy inside the eye to treat eye disease. The approach breaks new ground and has broad implications across the spectrum of eye diseases.

Mehdi Azimipour published a paper in Optics Letters describing how we measure light-evoked neural signaling in single rod and cone photoreceptors.

In the April 2020 issue of Ophthalmology (Vol 127, No.24), the editors provide a retrospective of landmark contributions to the clinical sciences. The paper on central corneal thickness with our own Dr. Jamie Brandt as first author is one of the featured papers. Kudos to Dr. Brandt for this outstanding recognition!!

Another article published by the UC Davis Eye Center with Dr. Michele Lim. A Comparison of Trabeculectomy Surgery Outcomes With Mitomycin-C Applied by Intra-Tenon Injection Versus Sponge Michele C Lim 1 , Betty Hom 2 , Mitchell R Watnik 3 , James D Brandt 2 , Allison R Altman 2 , Tania Paul 2 , Melissa G Tong 2

Great article about virtual events during the COVID pandemic written by Glenn Yiu, MD, PhD.

Read Dr. Park's article in American Journal of Ophthalmology.

Read about special filters in glasses that can help the color blind see colors better.

The Dept of Ophthalmology has granted Tzu-Ni Sin with a summer undergraduate research scholarship to conduct research in Dr. Glenn Yiu's laboratory. Tzu-Ni is a junior at UC Davis, and interested in pursuing a career in medicine and biology. She will be participating in cutting-edge studies using CRISPR-based gene editing technology as a potential treatment for wet macular degeneration.

Congratulations Dr. Lily Lin for being designated as a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

Infections following modern eye surgery are rare, but serious. Surgeons prevent this by giving patients antibiotic eyedrops to take after surgery. However, another approach is to inject antibiotics into the eye at the time of surgery. It is legal in the U.S. for doctors to use any drug as they set fit for a patient, including a drug that needs to be specially compounded by a pharmacist. The scarcity of these eye infections means it is challenging to conduct controlled cli...nical trials. Our ophthalmology department has regular journal clubs where a trainee presents recent literature and the other trainees and faculty discuss it. At a recent such club, resident Dr. Edward Lee presented a recent paper with a large population from India, and 30 members of our department discussed. Two faculty members, Drs. Jeff Caspar and Gary Novack, further investigated. They wrote a commentary, recently published in the Journal of Ocular Pharmacology Therapeutics evaluating these issues. While compounded antibiotic injected into the eye during surgery is becoming a standard. Unfortunately, that standard depends upon off-label use and pharmacy compounding, and this is at risk if anything happens to that medication.