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Focus on Anjali Pathak, MD

Dr. Anjali Pathak is medical director of the Washington University Refractive Surgery Center and assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences. Her areas of specialty include cataracts, intraocular lens implants, corneal disease and refractive surgery.

Dr. Pathak sees patients at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital, Medical Building Two, 10 Barnes West Drive, Suite 201.

FOR AN APPOINTMENT, PLEASE CALL 314 996-3300.

What happened in the course of your schooling to make you choose your specialty?

I really enjoyed the surgical rotations and realized surgery fit my personality more than internal medicine or pediatrics. I liked being in the operating room and working with my hands. I also liked ophthalmology because the eye is so interesting. Most of the eye can be examined with just a microscope and your own eyes – you don’t have to get a CT scan or a MRI to see what’s going on in the eye. Some people say the eyes are the window to the general health of the body – which is very true. If someone has diabetes or hypertension, you can generally tell how well it’s being controlled by looking at the eyes.

What brought you to Washington University?

I came here for my fellowship -- I trained with Dr. Anthony Lubniewski and ended up staying on as faculty. Washington University is associated with excellence in medicine and people come here for that reason. When patients are having trouble and they feel that they are not improving or not getting the right information from other health care providers -- they tend to turn to us. That brings in a wide-range of patients with a variety of medical problems -- that’s very appealing to me.
Dr. Pathak and her cousin at the Taj Mahal


Which aspect of your practice is most interesting?

I really enjoy the day after the surgery. I think about the patients that night and wonder how they’re going to be the next day.

I have a patient who had refractive surgery performed somewhere else. A few days after the surgery she developed infections in both eyes. She came to us and we performed a cornea transplant in her left eye. I saw her yesterday, three years after the transplant, and she is seeing 20/25. She is so happy.

Some things are immediately gratifying – like doing cataract surgery. Generally, the next day the patient is seeing better, and after a month sees very well. But with certain procedures, it is delayed gratification. I think the most interesting aspect is when you know you’ve impacted a patient’s life by improving their vision.

What new developments in your field are you most excited about?

Along the lines of cataract surgery, there are new lenses that can help people see not only far distances, but intermediate and near distances without glasses -- that’s exciting.

For certain cornea transplant patients, we are now able to replace part of the cornea instead of the entire cornea. It’s better for the patient because we are able to use a smaller incision. The recovery times are faster and rejection rates are lower.

There are constant changes in technology and surgical techniques that we must keep current with because of the variety of patients we see. We now have very advanced and powerful microscopes that allow us to operate on such a small structure (the eye) with a great amount of precision
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I would say the most exciting developments are premium lens implants for cataracts and descemet’s stripping endokertaplasty (DSEK). DSEK is small-incision surgery that replaces the diseased endothelial layer of the cornea by removing as little corneal tissue as possible and replacing it with healthy donor tissue.

Where are you from originally?

I’m Indian in origin, but I was born in Scotland and grew up in West Virginia. My parents are both physicians. They went to medical school in India and did their training in the United Kingdom. They worked in Canada for a year and then came to the United States when I was three. They’ve actually lived in the United States longer than anywhere else.

Is there a particular award or achievement that is most gratifying?

For me, I would have to say just being a part of the medical field is gratifying. When you see that you’ve made a difference in a patient’s life and what you’ve done has really improved the way they function -- it’s a really big deal.

What is the best advice you have ever received?

I feel as if I’ve received a lot of good advice, but the best advice has been that “time tends to heal”. You can get through the difficult times in your life if you can change your perspective and know that eventually, the situation is going to get better.

If you weren’t a doctor, what would you like to be doing?

First of all, I think that the medical profession has a really good sense of ethics. In medicine, there is a feeling of fulfillment on a daily basis. If I wasn’t a part of medicine, I would be very interested in economics and finance. As I’ve gotten older, I am more in touch with what is going on in the world and wish I had a deeper understanding of it. Ultimately, it would be interesting to try to work towards helping third world countries in terms of improving their basic economic structure and use that knowledge in government or international policy. That would be totally different than medicine.

Is there a lifestyle change that would most benefit our health?

We get caught up in our own stresses. Yoga, Eastern medicine philosophies and relaxation techniques have been around for thousands of years and have been shown to be beneficial to one’s health. I think they are good additions to one’s daily or weekly schedule because stress impacts our health more than we know. You may not think you are undergoing a significant amount of stress, but your body is really manifesting it. Exercise and yoga can be very beneficial to calming ourselves and our brain.
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Copyright 2009 Washington University School of Medicine
Copyright 2009 Washington University School of Medicine