Goal

Our mission is to train emerging clinician-scientists like you and to provide you with 1. excellent surgical skills, both new and classic ones, 2. current clinical knowledge and 3. compelling research opportunities. We want you to become a leading academic glaucoma specialists.

We offer clinical glaucoma fellowship positions that adhere to AUPO guidelines:

  • Duration: 1 year
  • 1 Fellow
  • Language requirements: C-1
  • Interview Cycle : Every year

The Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Würzburg has a long track record of developing and implementing new devices, techniques and software, especially in Glaucoma.

Especially in Glaucoma, diagnosis and treatment decisions are increasingly technology and data-analysis driven, exceeding and supplementing the abilities of an unaided human observer. You will have the unique opportunity to master these new tools already before they become available on a larger scale. This allows you to efficiently pursue research projects during your fellowship with us.

Our department emphasizes translational and basic research activities: there are 4 investigators with grants in our department. Patient care, education and research are seamlessly integrated and physically located in the same building, in the Eye and Ear Institute. The lab space for research alone exceeds 10,000 sqft in the main building.

The tradition of UKWs Glaucoma Service - to improve patient care by spearheading clinical and surgical technologies while also performing translational science - is continued under the leadership of the new Glaucoma Fellowship Director, Nils Loewen, MD, PhD who is also the Chair of Glaucoma.

As our Glaucoma Fellow, you will become an active member of the Glaucoma Service, working closely with all full-time clinical glaucoma faculty and the Glaucoma Resident in the clinical and surgical care of our glaucoma patients. The Clinical Glaucoma Fellowship at UKW is a one-year program.

Facilities

This clinic includes an array of state-of-the-art equipment including:

  • 24 exam rooms in the main clinic (not counting satellite facilities)
  • one of the first and most mature Epic electronic medical record systems in Ophthalmology that provides powerful analysis (e.g. IOP, RNFL, macular thickness trend graphs that is correlated with medications and events) and research data mining tools for data spanning more than a decade
  • Zeiss Forum data management system
  • several laser treatment rooms with argon, SLT, YAG, and diode lasers
  • several perimetry rooms with most current Humphrey and progression software, as well as Octopus, and Goldmann perimeters
  • an enormous photography and optic disc imaging suite with state-of-the-art Topcon fundus cameras for simultaneous digital color stereo and nerve fiber layer photography, Spectral Domain OCT, and a confocal laser tomography system (HRT3)
  • anterior segment evaluation with UBM and Visante OCT testing
  • state-of-the-art biometry for premium lenses with the Haag-Streit Lenstar LS 900
  • topography and cornea assessment with the wavefront analyzer Zeiss ATLAS™ 9000, OCULUS Pentacam, Orbscan and Konan specular microscopy

A portion of the fellow's week is spent on this service, examining patients with faculty members and performing laser surgery, including trabeculoplasty, iridotomy, and cyclophotocoagulation.

Surgical Training

  • Our fellowship emphasizes new glaucoma surgeries and vision restoration. Practically, that means that we often perform same session glaucoma and cataract surgery with premium lenses.

Because of this, it is helpful for applicants to already have good cataract surgery skills to be able to handle the large amount of complex cataract surgery in this fellowship.

We operate at two surgical centers that allow up to 23 cases per day per single attending. In all, there are four dedicated, fully equipped operating rooms with

  • state-of-the-art Zeiss Lumera xenon light microscopes and some Leica microscopes
  • true stereo assistant attachments
  • 1080 HD digital recording equipment
  • EVA phacoemulsification vitrectomy units with IOP controlling software and range of tip styles
  • range of standard and premium lenses (toric, diffractive) from different manufacturers
  • range of valved and non-valved glaucoma drainage implants
  • large range of horizontal, vertical and combined choppers
  • one trabectome unit

All surgeries are recorded, saved anonymously, and critically reviewed by the surgeon, supervisor and peers at the end of each day.

Procedures we perform include:

The fellow will either assist a faculty member in these procedures or serve as primary surgeon with assistance by a faculty member.

Average case counts are 11 trabeculectomies, 52 Ahmeds, 31 cataracts, 64 trabectomes, 43 cyclodestructions.

This means we are far above the AUPO required minimum in the US. AUPO requires:

"trabeculectomies or drainage implants (Ahmed, Baerveldt): primary: 25; primary + assisted: 50

cataracts: primary: 2; primary + assisted: 50

angle surgery (e. g. trabectome, Xen): primary: 0; primary + assisted: 3

cyclophotocoagulation: primary: 0; primary + assisted: 5"

Many of the surgeries at the following link were performed by fellows:

https://www.youtube.com/user/glaucomasurgery/videos?flow=grid&view=1

Responsibilities

The Glaucoma Fellow has certain independent responsibilities in addition to his/her training at the Glaucoma Clinic and 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 nighttime and weekend emergencies and occasionally assisting the residents in or performing emergency surgery.

The Fellow also participates in the Glaucoma Conferences and various other activities.

Research

Although this is a clinical fellowship, participation in research projects is encouraged and desired. We anticipate that one or more of the research projects performed by our fellows will lead to publications in peer-reviewed journals.

How to Apply

To apply for a Clinical Glaucoma Fellowship at the University of Würzburg, please send your cover letter, CV and references to Dr. Loewen.