Steven R. Sarkisian Jr BA, MD

Steven R. Sarkisian, Jr., MD is the director of the glaucoma fellowship at the Dean McGee Eye Institute and serves as a clinical professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Sarkisian received his undergraduate degree from Wheaton College, in Illinois where he graduated with honors. Following college, Dr. Sarkisian did graduate work at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Remaining in Philadelphia, he received his MD degree from Jefferson Medical College followed by an internship at Chestnut Hill Hospital.
Dr. Sarkisian completed an ophthalmology residency at the State University of New York Health Science Center (SUNY Downstate) in Brooklyn, New York and did a fellowship in glaucoma at the Hamilton Eye Institute at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, following which he was asked to stay on the faculty where he served until July 2006. Dr. Sarkisian joined the faculty at the Dean McGee Eye Institute in August 2006.
Dr. Sarkisian has a special interest in minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) combined with cataract surgery, and he was the first surgeon in Oklahoma (and the second in the United States) to perform the CyPass glaucoma implant since its FDA approval. He was also the first in the state to perform surgery with the iStent, the first MIGS device to receive FDA approval in 2012. He published a book about MIGS entitled, Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgery, a Practical Guide. Dr. Sarkisian speaks both nationally and internationally about MIGS and went on a mission teaching surgeons in Ethiopia how to perform the CyPass glaucoma implant and has been a part of several other missions performing MIGS outside the US.