Healthcare Innovator of the Year 2023 – Dr. Mahmoud Khaimi, Dean McGee Eye Institute - 405 Magazine

Healthcare Innovator of the Year 2023 – Dr. Mahmoud Khaimi, Dean McGee Eye Institute

Dr.

Dr. Mahmoud Khaimi is the first surgeon in the United States to perform canaloplasty with an iTrack Advance after helping to first pioneer the surgery in 2013. The procedure reopens and re-establishes the eye’s draining system to treat glaucoma.

Interview with Dr. Mahmoud Khaimi.

You received FDA approval for the iTrack Advance last April, after more than a decade of work in this area. What was it like to see all that work end with such an advancement in the treatment of glaucoma?

I can’t believe it’s happening. I’m so fortunate to be the one who this happened to. And then to be able to offer it to my patients, to see their outcomes and to see how it’s revolutionized our clinics and patients. Everything from doctor to patient chair time — I mean, we don’t have to baby patients anymore because it’s much less invasive. And it’s amazing, and then to have my colleagues adopt it and say very kind words; it’s great. Sometimes it’s overwhelming.

It’s humbling also, because it’s so big. At least for me, it makes me even that much more humble. On a spiritual note, too, it’s like, my God, this is the human body, where everything is created by God. Here we are trying to crack this puzzle. It just kind of reasserts my spiritual faith.

How has this lessened patient recovery time?

Back in the old days, anytime they needed to do something on the heart, they would have to crack the whole chest open, and that automatically meant a two-or-three-week hospital stay. Now, they can do the same thing, and you’re walking out of the hospital the day of. That’s kind of how it is in the eye world.

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