Dr. Omar joined the cornea service at University Hospitals Eye Institute in May 2019. Dr. Omar was born in Egypt and raised in Germany until he was 7 years old. He graduated the Egyptian Certificate for Secondary Education as one of the top 30 students in Egypt. He then joined Assiut Medical School in 1997, one of the largest and oldest medical schools in Egypt. He graduated medical school ranking 2nd among his class of over 600 students. He then did his internship and ophthalmology residency in Assiut University Hospitals, which is the largest University Hospital Group in Upper Egypt, serving a population of over 40 million. After completing his residency in 2008, Dr. Omar was selected to be among the faculty in the ophthalmology department of Assiut University Hospitals. 

In 2010, Dr. Omar was awarded a scholarship from the Egyptian Government to conduct his PhD research in the United States. He joined the Mayo Clinic in 2011, where he worked on his PhD project. During the same year, Dr. Omar became Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) certified and matched to a medical retina fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 2013, he moved back to Egypt for one year to finish his PhD. 

In 2014, Dr. Omar started a cornea, refractive and external disease fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for two years. During the fellowship, Dr. Omar trained on the latest techniques of corneal transplantation and lamellar corneal surgery, as well as refractive surgery and implanting intraocular lenses for patients who had complicated cataract surgeries. After finishing the fellowship in 2016, Dr. Omar moved back to Egypt for two years because he felt he needed to transfer the knowledge and experience he developed during his cornea fellowship to his patients and colleagues in Egypt. 

In 2017, Dr. Omar was able to start, for the first time in Upper Egypt, an Egyptian government-sponsored program to do corneal transplants for underprivileged people in Egypt at Assiut University Hospitals. Through that program, Dr. Omar and his colleagues at the Department of Ophthalmology, Assiut University Hospitals, were able to do corneal transplants to patients that would have otherwise waited for five years or more to have their surgeries done in Cairo University Hospitals, at no expense to the patients or their families. From 2017 to 2019, Dr. Omar performed over 120 corneal transplants at Assiut University Hospitals, in addition to about 100 other transplants in his private practice as well. With the experience he built over those years, he also taught many of his colleagues to do corneal transplants individually at Assiut University Hospitals, hoping that they will continue to provide the same level of care after he moved back to the U.S. to join University Hospitals.

 

 

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