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Puliafito named dean of Keck School of Medicine
OSN Retina/Vitreous Section Editor Carmen A. Puliafito, MD, MBA, was instrumental in the development of optical coherence tomography.
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Carmen A. Puliafito, MD, MBA, has been appointed dean of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and was scheduled to begin serving in his new position Nov. 1, the university announced.
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Image: Bascom Palmer Eye Institute |
Dr. Puliafito, Ocular Surgery News Retina/Vitreous Section Editor, will also serve as a professor of ophthalmology and health management and will hold the May S. and John Hooval Dean’s Chair in Medicine, which has a term of 5 years and 8 months, according to a press release from the university.
“The Keck School is poised to become a leader in American medicine,” Dr. Puliafito said in the release. “I was attracted by USC’s extraordinary commitment to the Keck School’s growth and success, a dynamic clinical and basic science faculty, superb new hospital and laboratory facilities and USC’s unparalleled support for meeting the health care needs of the Los Angeles community,” he said.
The interim chairman of Bascom Palmer is Eduardo C. Alfonso, MD, currently the Edward W.D. Norton Chair in Ophthalmology at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.
After earning his medical degree from Harvard University, Dr. Puliafito served as chairman of the New England Medical Center and took the initiative in creating the New England Eye Center in 1991. He was also instrumental in creating the LASIK Institute, a not-for-profit, public service entity that promotes patient and physician education about refractive surgery and LASIK in particular.
In 1997, he earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In the summer of 2001, Dr. Puliafito became professor and chair of the department of ophthalmology at the University of Miami School of Medicine and the director of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, which was his most recent position.
Dr. Puliafito helped develop the concept of photodynamic therapy for the treatment of macular degeneration and laid some of the foundations for LASIK with his early work on excimer lasers.
Among other innovations, he was the first surgeon to successfully perform experimental retinal photocoagulation with the semiconductor diode laser and the first to perform digital indocyanine green angiography.
Dr. Puliafito told OSN in a previous interview that his participation in the invention of optical coherence tomography has been his proudest accomplishment.
For more information:
- Carmen A. Puliafito, MD, MBA, can be reached at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, 900 NW 17th Street, Miami, FL 33136; 305-326-6303; fax: 305-326-6308; e-mail: CPuliafito@miami.edu.
- Katrina Altersitz is the Managing Editor of Ocular Surgery News Latin America and India Editions.