Fellowship Program Director: Richard B Rosen, MD
Participating Faculty: Avnish Deobhakta, MD, Ronald C Gentile, MD, Meenakashi Gupta, MD, Gennady Landa, MD, Gareth M.C. Lema, MD, Theodore Smith, MD, Carl Wilkins, MD
Length of Program: 2 year
Fellowship Positions: 2

New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai’s highly competitive two-year Vitreo-Retina Fellowship offers an opportunity for residents to further their clinical and surgical experience in the management of retinal diseases. Fellows will have access to our Retina Center, which features an expanded array of diagnostic technologies, including digital wide-field fluorescein angiography, high-speed indocyanine green angiography, 3-D ultrasonography, optical coherence tomography, multifocal ERG, and adaptive optics imaging, along with the latest in therapeutic modalities. A full spectrum of lasers and delivery systems, including computer guided laser delivery, allows all aspects of photocoagulation, photodisruption, and photodynamic laser surgery to be performed.

Fellows share a primary responsibility to staff the Retina Center, attend all surgical retina clinics, and help organize the surgical schedule in concert with the attendings on the Service. In addition, the fellows are responsible for monitoring all in-house retinal patients, assisting and supervising the junior fellows, and making themselves available for retinal consultation on all urgent care, trauma, and clinic cases.

NYEE’s retina fellows will have the opportunity to hone their surgical skills under the direct supervision of attending surgeons. State-of-the-art vitrectomy surgery is performed in operating rooms equipped with widefield Zeiss Lumera microscopes and integrated High Definition Video, along with every conceivable innovation available for treatment of the most complicated retinal detachments. Delicate macular surgeries of holes, membranes, and schisis are also routinely performed on the Service. The typical number of surgical operations performed by a fellow over the course of training is 350+ vitrectomies with or without scleral buckles, 50+ primary scleral buckles, 100-200 lasers, 5-10 cryopexies, and 981+ intravitreal injections, in addition to hundreds of other procedures performed while assisting on cases with private physicians or other services.

Senior residents on the service typically perform 25-50 retinal surgical cases in addition to cataract surgeries on vitrectomized eyes or those performed as part of complicated retinal cases. They are expected to present at weekly case conferences and actively participate in posterior trauma cases. The junior residents are primarily responsible for performing the spectrum of clinic laser procedures and typically log 120-200 cases. They are also charged with the management of medical retinal patients, and mastering the indications and interpretation of standard diagnostic procedures, specifically angiograms, OCTs, and ultrasound. First year residents rotating on the service are provided with specialized instruction on indirect ophthalmoscopy and fundus drawing under the direct tutelage of Dr. Seymour Fradin, emeritus associate retina chief and medical illustrator. They learn to read angiograms and OCTs, and present cases at weekly Retinal Conferences.

During weekly Retinal Conferences, fellows review current and classic cases from the service with senior retina faculty members. The conferences cover the topics included in the AAO BSCS curriculum and allow the attendings and fellows to explore all aspects of diagnosis, management, and current retinal disease literature. In addition, special lectures from visiting professors, quarterly focused grand rounds, and our extraordinary Jorge N. Buxton MD, Microsurgical Educational Center with the EYSI vitreous/phaco surgery simulator provide additional opportunities for retina education and skills refinement.

In addition to participation in multi-center trials, institutional research initiatives include studies of macular pigment density, quantitative retinal blood flow, tumor volume measurements, SLO microperimetry, OCT angiography, retinal oximetry, histopathology with immunohistochemistry, and single cell imaging using adaptive optics. Fellows are encouraged to participate in departmental research initiatives and to present at local, national, and international academic conferences, such as ARVO, AAO, ASRS, the New York Retina Club, and the Atlantic Coast Retina Conference. In addition, retina fellows are required to present at NYEE’s Annual Resident and Fellows Research Day and must submit at least one publishable manuscript during each phase of their training. 

Application Requirements

New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai seeks to attract a diverse group of individuals who are committed to developing a deep understanding of ophthalmic disease with a specialization in vitreo-retina conditions, patient care, and vision research. Interviews are conducted by invitation only. NYEE’s Vitreo-Retina Fellowship program participates in the Fellowship Matching Program sponsored by the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology. To receive further information, contact the San Francisco Fellowship Matching Program at www.sfmatch.org.

Applicants should submit:

• Completed SF Match Central Application Service (CAS) Form
• 3 letters of reference
• One published paper as a supplement