Dr. Lauren West Yancey M.D.

06/20/2025

Some days are just more fun than others! 😅🫣

Check out CenterPoint’s video.

05/16/2025

I had a fantastic time with the residents and faculty at the University of Kentucky! I can talk about cataract surgery for hours - just hit play and watch me go 😅. There were some great questions and I really enjoyed sharing my tips on working with the lens platform, especially Panoptix, our favorite multifocal!

04/22/2025

The tiniest stitch! Usually cataract surgery is completely stitch-less but every once in a while a stich is used if a patient has to lift heavy things after surgery, such as a disabled spouse or child. We can also use them if the cornea is thin or other special circumstances. The key to being a good surgeon is knowing when - and how - to put in a well placed suture. We use 10-0 nylon and the suture itself is smaller than the eyelashes (photo 2, see the lower lashes in the same view). The needle is about the size of an eyelash! We removed this patient’s suture today and she is 20/20 near and 20/20 distance with the Alcon lens. Suture removal takes only seconds.

04/16/2025

Super excited today for 12 eyes with the EVO implantable contact lens! Come see me at Georgia Vision Institute if you are nearsighted and interested in the latest solution for high myopia and astigmatism!

02/09/2025

Well today is my first unofficial snake 🐍 eye surgery 😅

My daughter’s ball python “Sapphire” was having trouble shedding her eye caps (the scale over her eye). With a little help from Google and scotch tape, Sapphire’s sight has been restored 🙌🏻 She can now find her dinner 🐁 😬

Don’t worry, I will be keeping my full time job as an eye surgeon 😆

01/26/2025

What a difference a few decades makes! Studying for grad courses at this age versus myself in my early twenties…the view sure is better with a different budget! I’m a pro at time management, it’s very hard to stress me out because I’ve lived through more stressful moments - including life or death - than I can count.

Why am I getting a Masters degree in Community Nutrition when I already have my M.D. and am a board certified Ophthalmologist (in addition to both my undergrad degrees, both a Bachelor of Arts and a bachelor of science)? Here’s my why:

- I was already studying this independently but I wouldn’t have had anything to back up my expertise

- I’m already an expert in my field and teach others technique. While I continue to learn, I have a massive base of knowledge in my field. As a lifelong learner, I was craving the journey of learning something new.

- As a cataract surgeon I care for an elderly population. Many of them aren’t as skilled with the internet and they aren’t accessing the information we have easy access to because of that. Many are stuck on the old dietary recommendations they learned in the 80’s or 90’s which we all know consisted of an unhealthy worship of skinny in addition to a host of mistakes by the FDA that lead to the obesity epidemic. If I can share a bit of knowledge with my patients I can reduce both eye disease burden and overall morbidity and ultimately mortality.

I want to help people increase the number of *good* years they have left.

01/17/2025

My new pics for the website!

01/07/2025

I’m so happy for my patient who recently finished her infusions of for her ! This sweet teacher noticed her eyes changing and sought help at our clinic. She was a great candidate for Tepezza and we were able to get approval from her health insurance 🙌 8 weekly infusions later and her eyes have returned to a normal position and she has so much less discomfort!

For years we only had surgical options for treating thyroid eye disease. What a blessing for both us and the patients to be able to treat this condition medically!

12/30/2024

1,127
That’s how many surgeries I performed this year in our surgery center! This doesn’t include in-office procedures or lasers…I’ll have to get that report later 😅

When you need eye surgery you want someone who does this day in and day out. Here at GVI this is what we do, it’s all we do and we’re pretty dang good at it. You won’t find a more experienced staff anywhere - eyes are literally the only body part we operate on so all of our equipment and staff are targeted towards giving you the absolute best outcomes.

Oh, and we don’t do surgery that doesn’t need to be done. I’ve turned down dozens of surgeries this year that just weren’t ready yet and I didn’t feel like their risk to reward ratio was there yet. Having this many surgeries to perform allows us to be picky about what we do and when we do it.

Thank you to my amazing team both upstairs and downstairs. You guys make it all possible.

12/24/2024

Something cute for Christmas! Meet Paisley. She was born with the canine version sclerocornea 🐕. Basically, her cornea was pretty hazy at birth - kind of like a foggy windshield! As she grew, the foggy areas shrank much like we see in the human version but she still had some significant glare issues. While it may not affect her driving 😉, the glare doesn’t help her tennis ball 🎾 chasing or car rides so she wears doggles! Paisley loves her doggles and happily wears them. She looks pretty cool in them too 😎 Thanks to my good friend Amy for allowing us to snap some super cool photos of Paisley!

12/20/2024

This patient has worn glasses since he was in first grade and I’m about to let him throw these things away! He’s a -13 in the right eye and a -18 in the left eye! And I bet you thought YOU were nearsighted 😳

I am now offering the EVO ICL - the “implantable contact lens” - in addition to traditional cataract surgery, refractive cataract surgery, clear lens exchange and microincisional glaucoma surgery. Come see me if you want to throw those glasses away too!

12/04/2024

As eye docs we hear “it’s like there’s a film over my eye” multiple times a day. That general symptom can be anything from dry eyes to cataracts to macular degeneration and beyond. Imagine my surprise when I peaked into the microscope and saw a the silicone tube from her Ahmed Glaucoma Valve traversing the pupil! The entire plate and tube mechanism seems to have migrated to the limbus, pushing the tube portion through the pupil, the terminal end resting just below the iris. Surprisingly the vision was still 20/30. This is going to need some work!

I am not the original surgeon and it appears to be good surgery but the patients advanced age - possibly with some eye rubbing - contributed to this late stage dislocation.