Cornea, Anterior Segment, and Refractive Surgery Fellowship

The fellowship program in Cornea, Anterior Segment, and Refractive Surgery utilizes a comprehensive curriculum in medical and surgical diseases of the cornea, drawing on the expertise of multiple faculty members. In addition to patient care responsibilities, fellows in this program are required to participate in clinical or basic research in vision, teach residents and staff, and present cases and research work at various clinical and scientific conferences. One fellow is selected annually through SF Match.

The Cornea, Anterior Segment, and Refractive Surgery fellow will complete twelve months of training at the Edward S. Harkness Eye Institute at Columbia University. During this period, he or she will work with members of the Cornea Service at Columbia University (Drs. Leejee Suh, George Florakis, Gabriel Rand, Danielle Trief, and Stephen Trokel) and gain experience in the assessment of corneal diseases, refractive surgery, and external diseases in a tertiary referral setting.

The fellow will gain experience in such diagnostics as corneal topography and tomography, anterior segment optical coherence tomography, anterior segment ultrasound, wavescan technology, confocal microscopy, and specular microscopy. In addition, he or she will assist in corneal, cataract, and refractive surgery, and will often be given the opportunity to carry out a significant portion of these procedures. The fellow will assist in faculty cases and teach residents in Cornea Clinic (on a bi-weekly basis). Corneal, refractive, and cataract surgeries derived from the resident clinic will be performed under the supervision of the cornea faculty. The fellow will also participate in surgery cases that require a level of expertise or experience higher than that of a PGY-4 resident. Finally, the fellow will be required to complete a clinical research or basic science project in vision. It is expected that the quality of this work will be original and worthy of publication in peer-reviewed journals and present at national meetings.