Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: (210) 567-2579
E-mail: Sansom@uthscsa.edu

Robert Snip, M.D., volunteer medical director of the Eye Bank, presents $10,000 check to Carlos Rosende, M.D., professor and chairman of the department of ophthalmology.
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San Antonio (Feb. 8, 2007) – The San Antonio Eye Bank recently donated $10,000 to enhance medical resident education in the department of ophthalmology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Robert Snip, M.D., volunteer medical director of the Eye Bank and a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the Health Science Center, presented the check to Carlos Rosende, M.D., professor and chairman of the department of ophthalmology.

“Because of the hard work and volunteerism of our board members, the San Antonio Eye Bank has some private endowment in addition to funds received through placement of corneas and other eye-related tissues,” Dr. Snip said. “We want to put this endowment back into the community, and our board voted to make this grant to support residency training.”

The grant will fund residents’ participation in a basic science course that is a key preparation to becoming board certified in ophthalmology, Dr. Rosende said.

The Eye Bank is considered a tissue bank rather than an organ bank. It is most commonly utilized to procure and redistribute donor corneas for transplant. This is a highly successful and common procedure that returns the gift of sight to many, Dr. Snip said.

The Eye Bank has a long history of support for the department of ophthalmology at the Health Science Center, said Jim Wagner, executive director of the Eye Bank.
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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care industry, the leading sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields. For more information, click on www.uthscsa.edu.