Barry Kuppermann M.D.

Barry Kuppermann appreciates the beauty and diversity of the world. An American by birth with Brazilian parents and a Thai wife, Kuppermann is not Armenian, yet he serves as an AECP physician and board member.

An M.D. and Ph.D., Kuppermann joined AECP out of respect for the EyeCare Project and the commit-ment of the organization’s founder, Dr. Roger Ohanesian.

“My parents immigrated to the United States from Brazil, and I am the first of my family to be born in the United States. I go to Brazil once or twice a year to lecture on retinal diseases, so I was very sensitive to—and impressed by—the depth of Roger’s commitment in providing eye care for people in his ancestral home,” Kuppermann explains.

Although Kuppermann, chief of retina services, department of ophthalmology at the University of Califor-nia-Irvine (UCI), has been consistently named one of the “Best Doctors in America,” he initially wanted to become a scientist. “I was particularly interested in how humans learn at a cellular level through modifica-tions in the connections of brain cells.”

Consequently, after earning a B.S. in biophysics at the University of California-Berkeley in 1977 (he re-mained on the Dean’s List for four years and graduated with honors), Kuppermann attended the Califor-nia Institute of Technology in Pasadena where he earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience in 1983.

“The part of the brain that we know the most about from a nerve cell connection standpoint was the vis-ual part of the brain, so at Cal Tech, I became a vision researcher so that I could study how we ‘learn’ how to see.”

Because Kuppermann’s research began to have important implications for clinical ophthalmology, he de-cided to attend medical school after completing his Ph.D. and pursue an academic career in ophthalmol-ogy and vision research.

He attended the University of Miami because it had an accelerated program for people with doctorates. Kuppermann graduated with his M.D. in 1985, two years after he received his Ph.D. Then, he attended the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) for an internship and residency. The next year, Kuppermann obtained a fellowship in Baltimore with the retina group that had just moved from Johns Hopkins University to suburban Baltimore. Another one-year retina fellowship followed at the University of California-San Diego.

In 1992, Kuppermann arrived at UCI to serve as chief of retina service for the department of ophthalmol-ogy. Three years later, he traveled to Armenia with Roger Ohanesian.

“It was clear to me at that time that to provide significant and effective retina care, visits once or twice a year would be inadequate as the retina doesn’t ‘keep’ the way that cataracts usually do and glaucoma frequently does.”

Therefore, Kuppermann arranged for an Armenian ophthalmologist, Armen Vartanian, to attend UCI for one year as a clinical and surgical fellow.

“By the completion of his one year of fellowship, Armen was fully trained in modern Western retinal clini-cal/surgical philosophy and methodology.”

Kuppermann describes a particularly successful AECP operation involving a patient flown to UCI from Yerevan, Armenia.

“I performed an exhaustive six-to-eight hour surgery on her which took her from near total blindness to functional vision. She was a juvenile diabetic … but it amazed me that someone could have such severe diabetic retinopathy that it would take eight hours of surgery to repair (1-2 hours of surgery is more typi-cal, three hours for a severe case), which is the single longest surgery of my career."

Kuppermann’s career is filled with numerous honors and awards. His name repeatedly appears in nu-merous Best Doctors/Best Ophthalmologists lists. In addition, he remains actively involved in many pro-fessional and community activities. They include membership in the Western Retina Study Club, Orange County Society of Ophthalmology, Los Angeles County Medical Association, California Association of Ophthalmology Advisory Committee, Retina Society, Vitreous Society, Pan-American Association of Oph-thalmology, Society of Heed Fellows, American Medical Association, American Academy of Ophthalmol-ogy, and Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

Despite a crowded professional schedule, Kuppermann makes time to serve on the AECP Board of Di-rectors and as an AECP physician. He finds the latter role especially rewarding. “As a university-based physician, I have committed my career to teaching as well as participating in the all important network of providing care to our local patients in need, both those with and without financial means. Being an AECP physician is an extension of that same philosophy.”

One patient whom Kuppermann examined during his 1995 trip to Armenia moved to Los Angeles one year later just so that the doctor could treat him.

“He had a complicated condition called Behcet’s Disease which had blinded one of his eyes in Armenia by the time he was 15. Suddenly, one day a year or so later (after the examination in Armenia), he called to let me know that he had moved to Hollywood with his mother and sister to be treated by me,” Kupper-mann explains. “He would come down from Hollywood to Orange County once or twice a month for his care. With continued monitoring and care of his eye disease, he maintained 20/20 vision in his remaining eye for five years or so until he died of neurological complications of his disease.”

Despite the long hours spent helping patients, Kuppermann, who lives in Laguna Beach, California, spends his “spare time” with wife, Jantana and sons Jacob, 5, and Ethan, 2. He enjoys “simple adven-tures” with his boys and takes them to the beach, library, museums, and on visits with their grandparents. During his undergraduate, graduate school, medical school, and residency years, Kuppermann took year-long journeys on four occasions “to get a sense of the beauty and diversity of the world.” Because travel remains “a big focal point,” Kuppermann enjoys “sharing the world” with his wife and children.

Kuppermann has a “fundamental gratitude” in his approach to life as he spends his day treating people with significant vision problems in their life.

“As long as I have the love of my family and reasonable health, I am satisfied. I feel fortunate to be able to do something so meaningful with my life, be paid enough to do it that I am able to put a roof over my family’s head, and still have time and money left over for fun adventures all over the world with my wife and children.”