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Established 50 years ago, the Dean McGee Eye Institute has grown to more than 40 faculty members, including scientists, and now treats 60,000 patients and performs 10,000 major surgeries annually.
The institute was actually inspired by the pioneering oil and gas industry leader’s own successful retinal detachment surgery in 1971.
The first patient in Oklahoma with a detached retina to have his vision completely restored through the surgery had a new lease on life, and four years later, following extensive fundraising led by McGee, the institute that bears his name opened its doors in 1975 under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Acers.
Following the retirement of Acers in 1991, Dr. David Parke was president of the institute from 1992 to 2009. He recalled several motivational stories from his 17 years, including seeing a child from eastern Oklahoma who had an incredibly rare retinal disease.
“His parents were, as any parent would be, just beside themselves with fear,” Parke said.
Parke, also the former CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, drew blood for testing that showed the patient was experiencing not just an eye disease, but a condition that also affected the blood vessels in the kidneys and brain. The child was not just at risk for going blind. He could have died.
In large part due to the contacts with other research institutions, as well as the diligence and persistence of the DMEI team, Parke said he was able to get the child on experimental medications that resulted in a successful treatment.
Two years ago, that same patient graduated from medical school with healthy kidneys, brain and vision, and is off all medications.
“And that’s not because of me, it’s because of the fact that at an institution like Dean McGee, you have a lot of expertise in many different areas,” Parke said. “Being a part of the OU College of Medicine is critical, because sometimes we need to engage pediatric rheumatologists, kidney specialists and others to sort of complete the care package, and it’s a tremendous advantage to have those kinds of professional relationships.”
Dr. Michael Siatkowski, the current CEO of DMEI, also sees the rewards in his patient success stories.
One of the fulfilling aspects of being a pediatric ophthalmologist for Siatkowski is being able to see where children go in life after being treated at the institute. He began seeing patients at the institute in 1999, and since then, he’s even started to see the children of patients from his first years.
Among his early patients was a young girl who had significantly decreased vision, a crossed eye, and was performing poorly in school. After surgery and an appropriate lens prescription, she went on to graduate high school at the top of her class, graduate from the University of Oklahoma and become an engineer.
As research leads to new treatments, with DMEI contributing significantly to those efforts, stories like those have become commonplace.
“I understand that what I and my partners do, there are dozens more stories like this,” Siatkowski said. “We have services here that don’t exist anywhere else in the state.”
DMEI has the only ocular oncologist in Oklahoma to diagnose and treat eye cancers. The institute is also home to the only neuro-ophthalmology practice in the region, with doctors who specialize in visual problems connected to the nervous system, such as optic nerve diseases and double vision.
Technology and knowledge continue to grow at the institute, as well as the size of the campus, now at 150,000 square feet, but Siatkowski said the mission remains the same.
“We want to make life better for our fellow Oklahomans and for the world,” Siatkowski said. “It’s sort of the same tripartite mission we had at the beginning — taking good care of patients, doing great vision research so we can come up with preventative and curative treatments for disease, and then the education piece is important to provide doctors for the next generation of Oklahomans, and try to do what we can to fill that gap in service.”
A pipeline of eye care providers and a wealth of treatments to take care of all Oklahomans
Since inception, DMEI has trained close to 200 residents. Siatkowski said 36% of those have stayed in Oklahoma to practice in a wide breadth of specialties, including all major ophthalmology subspecialties.
“Because we have this, people don’t have to travel to another state,” Siatkowski said.
Siatkowski said DMEI has the largest collection of diagnostic and therapeutic equipment in one place, and if a patient needs something that can’t be done elsewhere, they won’t deny them care due to their inability to pay.
Over the institute’s five decades, he said they’ve never turned a patient away. He estimates they’ve done about $12 million of uncompensated care because it’s part of their mission.
“Without us, people would have to leave Oklahoma to get care, or even worse, they wouldn’t get the care at all,” Siatkowski said.
Parke said DMEI is as strong as it is today because of support from the Oklahoma business community, including Stanton Young, James Tolbert, Larry Nichols, George Records, Mike Samis and David Rainbolt. Above all, he gives thanks to the patients.
“They’ve trusted the institute with their vision, sometimes with their lives, and have really given it a reason for being,” Parke said. “And hopefully the institute’s physicians, scientists and staff have earned that trust over the last 50 years.”
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