Education & Fellowship

The Clinical Glaucoma Fellowship at the Yale Eye Center is a one-year program, usually beginning in July. The Glaucoma Fellow is an active member of the Glaucoma Team, working closely with the clinical faculty — Christopher Teng, MD, Ji Liu, MD, and Soshian Sarrafpour, MD — and the Glaucoma Resident in the clinical and surgical care of our glaucoma patients.

The 5000-square feet Glaucoma Clinic includes an array of state-of-the-art equipment including:

• 12 fully equipped examination rooms
• a laser treatment room with argon, SLT, and YAG
• a perimetry suite with Humphrey, and Goldmann perimeters
• a photography and optic disc imaging room with state-of-the-art OPTOS fundus cameras, Cirrus and Spectralis OCT machines, OCTA, IOL Masters, and Topography
• anterior segment evaluation with UBM and Anterior Segment OCT imaging

A portion of the fellow's week is spent on this service, examining patients with faculty members and performing laser surgery, which includes trabeculoplasties, iridotomies, and cyclophotocoagulation.

Incisional surgery is performed at the newly renovated Guilford Outpatient Surgery Center and at Yale-New Haven Hospital with the fellow having the option of operating on surgical cases done at Bridgeport Hospital. Each operating room is fully equipped with ceiling-mounted or floor-based operating Zeiss or Lucia microscopes. Surgical procedures performed by the Glaucoma Section include:

• trabeculectomies with and without antimetabolites
• Glaucoma drainage implant devices including Ahmed, Baerveldt, and Molteno tube implants
• Trabeculotomies, goniotomies, and pediatric tube implants (for childhood glaucoma)
• Minimally invasive glaucoma surgeries including iStent inject, Kahook goniotomy, Trabectome, ab interno canaloplasty, GATT, micropulse transscleral cyclophotocoagulation, and XEN implants
• Revisions of prior glaucoma surgeries
• clear cornea phacoemulsification with foldable lenses, femtosecond assisted cataract surgery, intraoperative aberrometry, and multifocal IOL implants
• combined phacoemulsification and glaucoma surgery for patients with co-existing cataracts and glaucoma

The fellow will either assist a faculty member in these procedures or serve as primary surgeon with assistance by a faculty member. The fellow will typically spend 2-2.5 days in the operating room. In some cases, the fellow may also be asked to assist a resident in surgery.

The Glaucoma Fellow has certain independent responsibilities in addition to his/her training at the Glaucoma Clinic and Temple Surgical Center.

• As a Clinical Instructor faculty member, the fellow participates in the on-call schedule with other faculty members. This involves backing up the residents for night-time and weekend emergencies and occasionally assisting the residents in or performing emergency surgery. The fellow is compensated for shifts taken.
• The Glaucoma Fellow is also responsible for staffing the resident run hospital-based eye clinic one half day. This is one source of the fellow's salary.
• The Fellow also participates in the Glaucoma Conferences and various other activities.

Although this is a clinical fellowship, participation in research projects is encouraged. We anticipate that one or more of the research projects performed by our fellows will lead to publications in peer-reviewed journals or presentation at national conferences. The fellow also has the opportunity to go to regional and national conferences including AGS, AAO, CSEP, and NANOS meetings.

• The research projects are primarily of a clinical nature. Although basic research is not a typical part of the clinical fellowship, arrangements can be made to incorporate this for those with special interests. In some cases, a two-year fellowship can be arranged, with one year in the laboratory.