About Specialized Eye Care

Specialized Eye Care was founded in 2002 by Dr. Elena Jiménez. The company’s ideology from the beginning has been to provide its patients the latest technology and surgical techninques in for the best ocular health care. During the early years, Dr. Jiménez had the opportunity to work alongside other prominent ophthalmologists in the island, including Dr. Vicente Alcaraz( oculoplastics), Dr. Héctor Mayol, Dr. Juan Nevarez (glaucoma), Dr. Raúl Franceschi (retina), Dra. Nilda Pérez, Dr. Luis Santiago- Cabán (cornea) and Dra. Nannette de León. (glaucoma). Having these professional relationships have enriched her knowledge and expertise within all of the different subspecialties in the field of Ophthalmology. Since August 2014, Dr. Jiménez has kept her practice at the Medical Tower within Auxilio Mutuo Hospital. Specialized Eye Care provides patients with all of the newest technological equipment including the Lenstar, IProfiler, Humphrey Visual Fields, Electronic Medical Records, OCT, and fundus camera.

Dr. Jiménez and the staff of Specialized Eye Care have a strong compromise to provide their patients with the best care and has an appointment system in order to minimize patient waiting time in the office. Appointments are made by blocks of patient for the different time slots. All appointments are confirmed via text messaging or personal call. In addition to scheduled patients, we allocate time slots in our daily schedule for patients with ocular emergencies.

The Specialized Eye Care team includes, two front desk secretaries, two optical technicians, two opticians, and an office administrator and each of them excels within their job related duties.

Call now and make your appointment at Specialized Eye Care. We hope to see you very soon!

Dr Elena Jiménez

Dr Elena Jiménez is considered one of the best ophthalmic surgeons in San Juan. She has been chosen by her peers for the “Doctors Choice” award in the field of Ophthalmology for the last five consecutive years and has gained the trust among some of her colleagues who are no longer performing sugery and refer all their surgical candidates to her. Around 35% of her surgical cases, are referrals from other medical doctors. Dr. Jiménez uses the latest surgical equipment and techniques at the surgicenter Vista in City View Plaza. She is one of the 12 co-founders of this center that opened its doors in 2009 and performed the first case when the center opened. Since then, Vista has become the center of excellence for ocular sugery in Puerto Rico and has 24 ophthalmologists within its faculty. Vista is a modern, ambulatory center that models the best ocular surgicenters in the US. Medicare inspectors have said that our center is “even better than most of the US surgicenters”.

After the patient decides to undergo cataract surgery, Dr. Jiménez will schedule an appointment 2-3 weeks prior to the surgery for the eye measurements or biometry. In Specialized Eye Care we have the Lenstar for optimal ocular measurements prior to cataract surgery. The Lenstar has 32 points of reference that measures in each eye. In comparison, the other available biometry machines have between 8-12 reference points. Thus, the accuracy of the eye measurements taken for intraocular lens selection has an obvious advantage to any other biometry machine. Once the technician does the Lenstar measurements, our team analyzes the data and discusses with their patients the best alternative within all the available premium intraocular lenses (monofocal, toric, multifocal) to meet their specific needs.

The typical cataract surgery case is done by Dr. Jiménez in less that 10 minutes. The patient is prepared and pupil is dilated. Then, the anesthesiologist gives the patient an intravenous sedative, and pain medication and topical anesthesia drops are instilled in the eye at the beginning of the surgery. The typical patient does not feel pain. Dr. Jiménez doesn’t perform surgery with injection of anesthetic in the eyeball as in the past, except for select cases with hypermature cataracts. After the eye has been numbed with the anesthetic, Dr. Jiménez introduces an ultrasound probe which resembles a pen into the eye via a very small (2.4mm) incision.

Then cataract is broken into four pieces and each piece is emulsified with the ultrasound probe until no cataract material remains. The intraocular lens is then introduced via the same small incision with a syringe-like instrument. The intraocular lens is then injected into the eye folded and once introduced it is then opened and positioned centrally by Dr. Jiménez to finish the procedure. Usually, there is no need to take any sutures and this “sutureless” procedure makes the patient recovery much faster.