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The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Alan D. Lesson, MD
Department of Ophthalmology]

Alan D. Letson, MD: My name is Alan Letson. I'm in the Department of Ophthalmology. I am a retina specialist. That's my primary area of interest, retinal diseases, but more specifically, I'm interested in diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration and other macular diseases. My goal is to treat my patient with care and compassion and deliver the state-of-the-art treatment that's available for them. I grew up in a medical family, and I think by the time I was in fourth grade I think I knew I wanted to be a doc. I've always enjoyed biological sciences, and I've always wanted to do things that would serve people. And medicine was the perfect combination of those things. I went to medical school at Case Western Reserve University and interned in internal medicine at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland. I did my ophthalmology training here at Ohio State, and I did a retina fellowship here at Ohio State. I was in private practice for about 25 years in a retina-only practice. During that time, I spent approximately 20% of my time at Ohio State, primarily in a teaching role, and came to the university full-time in 2006 and have been loving it here ever since.

My work here right now has several different avenues, I guess. Patient care has always been one of my favorite things. I still see patients that I started taking care of 30 years ago, and I love that aspect of my clinical practice. I really enjoy teaching, and that was the main reason I came to Ohio State on a full-time basis. I'm involved in a number of clinical trials that have to do with age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, specifically diabetic macular edema. I'm also involved in some work with the biomedical research department looking at drug delivery systems for treating macular degeneration using nanoparticles. 

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Future of Ophthalmology]

I think probably the big thing in ophthalmology will be the genetics aspect of it, where we can do genetic testing and identify more accurately the disease process, what the underlying mechanism is, and with that genetic information come up with new therapies.

That's one of the hot areas in retina right now is genetic therapy, and although it's in its infancy and not generally available to the public at this point, I think in the future that will be something that will allow us to truly tailor specific treatments for individual patients based on that genetic information. 

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Personalized Care]

I think I've probably always practiced some form of P4, or personalized medicine. I've always been a believer in having the patient play an active role in their care and whether that's teaching the patient to be able to monitor their own disease process or look for changes and report them as needed or participate in their care, I think that's a very important part of patient management. I always like to talk to my patients and have them provide information and thought and choice as to what might be the best option for their treatment.