LASIK and PRK sub-specialist David R. Shapiro, M.D. is one of the nation’s leading authorities on refractive eye surgery. Dr. Shapiro devotes his practice exclusively to laser vision correction and has performed over 25,000 refractive surgical procedures, utilizing the latest in laser technologies.
Dr. Shapiro has been recognized as a world leader in refractive surgery by EyeWorld and as one of the “nation’s top refractive surgeons” by Primary Care Optometry News, two of the nation’s leading eyecare journals. EyeWorld, in an international survey, listed Dr. Shapiro as one of 30 world leaders in LASIK surgery. Dr. Shapiro has been named a “VISX Star Surgeon,” a title awarded to the top 5% of refractive surgeons nationwide by VISX, the manufacturer of the leading excimer laser system in the United States. NBC Channel 4 News in Los Angeles has named Dr. Shapiro “one of the country’s top laser specialists”.
As a recognized leader in his field, Dr. Shapiro has helped teach refractive surgery to over 1,000 eye surgeons from across the United States and around the world.
Dr. Shapiro has addressed international congresses of refractive surgery and has been invited to speak on refractive surgery to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. He has been invited to teach refractive eye surgery at major university medical centers, including Stanford, UCLA, UC Davis, and UC Irvine. Dr. Shapiro has served as an investigator for FDA clinical trials of LASIK for the correction of farsightedness as well as an investigator for the CRS FDA study of LASIK for the correction of nearsightedness and astigmatism. Dr. Shapiro has also been involved in the design of microsurgical instruments for LASIK and RK. He has additionally authored over thirty authoritative papers on refractive surgery and related issues and has contributed chapters to various textbooks of refractive surgery. Dr. Shapiro’s work has now been published worldwide.
Dr. Shapiro has been particularly involved in helping the clinical evolution of customized wavefront laser vision correction, the newest and most sophisticated form of LASIK and PRK. As a pioneer in wavefront laser vision correction, Dr. Shapiro was one of the first surgeons in the world to publish an article in a medical journal about techniques for optimizing results with the new technology. Since that landmark article, Dr. Shapiro was the first surgeon in the world to author an article describing the use of customized wavefront laser vision correction to correct night vision problems induced by earlier forms of non-wavefront LASIK. This helped open up an entirely new, therapeutic dimension for wavefront surgery to improve vision in those patients with problems from earlier generations of laser surgery. Dr. Shapiro also was the first surgeon in the world to author articles on the use of customized wavefront LASIK to refine the optics of patients who had undergone older formats of PRK and RK vision correction. Recently, Dr. Shapiro was the first surgeon in the world to introduce third generation wavefront technology in a medical journal. Dr. Shapiro’s teaching articles on wavefront surgery have now been widely read by ophthalmologists internationally.
Dr. Shapiro attended medical school at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine, and ophthalmology residency at the prestigious Ophthalmology Department at the University of California at Davis. After completing his ophthalmology residency training, Dr. Shapiro spent two additional postgraduate fellowship years studying refractive surgery, including extensive fellowship study with J. Charles Casebeer, M.D., the “father” of modern refractive surgery. Dr. Shapiro is one of only fourteen surgeons in the world to have studied in this extensive one-on-one fellowship setting under Dr. Casebeer.
Dr. Shapiro has himself undergone refractive surgery in both eyes and now enjoys 20/20 vision.
