Appointments

 The Neuro-Ophthalmology Service is open Mondays and Tuesdays from 7:30am to 5:00 pm and Wednesdays through Fridays from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm.  Patients are seen upon referral by a physician or optometrist.  To obtain further information or to schedule an appointment in Neuro-Ophthalmology, please contact:

Tel: (617) 573-3412

Fax: (617) 573-3851

What to Expect in Your Appointment

Patients should bring to their initial appointment all available CT and MRI pictures (rather than simply the written reports of these tests) and other medical information that might be helpful. Patients’ eyes typically will be dilated in order to permit a thorough evaluation of the interior of the eyes, so adequate arrangements for assisted transportation after the visit should be in place.

The style of our practice is quite traditional in that we arrive at our diagnoses mostly by taking a detailed history of the patient’s problem and performing a clinical examination of the patient. These activities are very time-consuming – we devote, on average, about one hour of physician time for each new consultation. This time is also used to provide detailed explanations to our patients about their problems, and to answer any questions that they have.

Our patients often require neuro-imaging and coordination of care with other medical specialists, both of which require additional physician time over and above the direct patient encounter. For follow-up visits, we provide, on average, about 30 minutes of physician time to our patients. By general ophthalmic standards, these times are quite long, but our faculty believes that this amount of time is necessary to appropriately address our patient’s complex and potentially disabling problems.

As we are working in an academic medical environment, we include our Harvard Medical School residents and fellows in patient care. These physicians have earned their medical degrees, and are now training with us in the specialty areas of ophthalmic medicine.  They have considerable opportunity to observe our faculty members as they evaluate patients, but spend the majority of their time actively performing clinical evaluations of patients that are assigned to them. In all cases, patients who are evaluated by residents and fellows are also examined by a faculty member, which ensures the highest quality patient care while also providing significant opportunities for the faculty to instruct the trainees.