About Dr. Ravi Parikh MD MPH

Dr. Parikh’s initial inspiration to subspecialize in retina and pursue ophthalmology surprisingly occurred while performing policy research on malaria in Nigeria as a student at Vanderbilt. One evening, a middle-aged woman with uncontrolled diabetes arrived in a diabetic coma. The physicians lamented that while they could offer her life-saving treatment, they could do nothing to treat her severe vision loss from diabetes. Nearly blind, she had lost her independence. Dr. Parikh’s clinical and research experiences in retina, coupled with my work and studies in public health and policy, helped him to discover my interest in retina, in which I can combine clinical practice, health policy, and research to improve vision, prevent blindness, and impact many patients’ lives.

As a medical student at Vanderbilt and during his masters at Harvard, Dr. Parikh saw patients and performed research while learning to examine patients with various retinal diseases. He earned an appreciation for the impact retina specialists can have on the quality of life of patients whose vision is threatened or has already deteriorated. One study he was primary author on was published in Retina (link) that provided useful prognostic information for diabetics when receiving their first laser surgery for proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Heand others often use this study and others to counsel patients. The numerous opportunities to create new knowledge to improve patient care further fueled Dr. Parikh’s interest in retina.

Dr. Parikh is an expert on the treatment of retinal diseases especially use of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor medications  (anti-VEGF) for the treatment of age related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal vein occlusions, and all other retinal diseases. He has designed and organize the largest evaluation at the time of anti-VEGF drug use in the United States evaluating the first 10 years of use across all diagnoses (including off-label uses), including nearly 1 million intravitreal injections from both publicly and privately insured patients across the nation. In November 2016, he published his findings in the leading journal Ophthalmology (link). He has also published an influential study demonstrating how certain patients with Dry macular degeneration are at higher risk than previously thought for converting to “wet” macular degeneration and needing earlier treatment in the leading journal JAMA Ophthalmology (link). He is also focused on improving the delivery of care both in populations as well as individually and has published the largest ever study on the identification and prevention of surgical errors across all subspecialties (including eye injections, cataract surgery, retina surgery, surgical lasers etc) which will hopefully lead to improved patient safety in quality of care (link). Along with providing excellent clinical care, Dr. Parikh hopes to also improve the delivery of care to improve vision and prevent blindness as a whole.

The primary reason for Dr. Parikh’s interest in retina and ophthalmology as a whole brings me back to the unfortunate woman with diabetes he met in Nigeria. Retina is where his broader interests converge to impact individual lives. He enjoys working in clinic, counseling patients on their diabetes, performing surgical lasers to prevent severe vision loss, and injecting anti-VEGF agents to improve patients’ vision. His interests are focused on how we can best develop and deliver all this cutting edge care to the most patients.