Jonathan Lass, MD

About

Jonathan Lass, MD, is the Charles I. Thomas Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, Distinguished Attending Surgeon of the Center for Anterior Segment Diseases and Surgery in the University Hospitals Eye Institute, Director of the UH Eye Image Analysis Reading Centers, and medical director of Eversight Ohio. After completing his ophthalmology residency at Boston University Medical Center in 1977, he went on to complete a two-year fellowship in cornea and external diseases at Harvard’s Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the Eye Research Institute of the Retina Foundation.

He joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the medical staff of University Hospitals in 1979 and became chair of the department in 1993. He served for more than 20 years in this capacity, building its clinical programs to institute status at University Hospitals providing comprehensive and subspecialty care in all fields of ophthalmology, more than tripling the faculty and providing care throughout Northeast Ohio, overseeing residency training with one of the largest programs in the country, and leading the department and the larger visual sciences research center, collaborating with over 30 investigators in both clinical and basic science departments to be 5th in the country in National Eye Institute (NEI) funding in 2013.

Patient Care

Dr. Lass’s first and foremost interest is providing excellent patient care. He is one of the leading cornea and external disease experts in the U.S. and was recognized for his efforts to advance the field receiving the Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology in 2004. He subsequently received the prestigious R. Townley Paton Award from the Eye Bank Association of America in 2012, and the Castroviejo Medal from the Cornea Society in 2017; these two awards are the highest honor for a corneal surgeon given by these two leading cornea organizations in the United States.

Teaching

Over his entire career he has been strongly dedicated to medical student and resident education. He served as program director of the residency program for three periods of time while chair since 1993 and most recently from 2009 until 2014. He remains committed to teaching the next generation of ophthalmologists to be the finest in their medical and surgical skills and their compassion for their patients.

Research

Dr. Jonathan H. Lass is recognized as an Expertscape Expert in Corneal Endothelium for being in the top 1% of scholars with published work about Corneal Endothelium over the past 10 years. He has research interests in the area of corneal function and immunology, genetics, cornea image analysis, and clinical trials of corneal disease, with over 200 publications with active funding from the NEI for these studies. He contributed to major advances in corneal preservation and transplantation including the NEI-funded Cornea Donor Study examining the effect of donor age on transplant survival and endothelial cell loss. This study reported its 10-year findings showing that donor age did not impact survival of the transplant for the great majority of donor corneas available in the United States. He then served as the study chair of the NEI funded multi-center prospective trial, the Cornea Preservation Time Study, which examined the effect of preservation time of the donor on graft survival and endothelial cell loss following Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK). The study found that corneas could be preserved longer than previously practiced out to 11 days of storage without impacting graft success and endothelial cell loss. Numerous other factors were also discovered impacting DSAEK outcomes to guide best practices presented in 12 publications that have come out since 2015 in high profile journals. He is now the study chair the NEI-funded multi-center prospective clinical trial, the Diabetes Endothelial Keratoplasty Study (DEKS) that will examine the impact of diabetes and its severity in the donor and recipient on Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) outcomes. With diabetes in nearly 40% of the donor pool, determining which donors with diabetes are suitable and which are not is a very important question to address.

He is an avid cellist and founding member of the World Doctors Orchestra since 2008. The orchestra has given concerts around the world and raised over 1 million euros for local charities. He most recently performed with the group in Paris and Houston in 2019 with the next concert post Covid planned with the group in Frankfurt and Koblenz, Germany this coming November.

Finally, Dr. Lass serves as Medical Director of Eversight Ohio, and on the boards of the Cleveland Eye Bank Foundation and Eversight, one of the largest eye bank organizations in the United States. He also serves as the Senior Editor of the journal of the Cornea Society, Cornea.