Draft:Holhoș, Teodor

= Teodor Holhoș = Teodor Holhoș (born March 3, 1983) is a Romanian eye surgeon and the founder of Romania’s largest independent eye surgery clinic network, Clinicile “Dr. Holhoș”.

Early life and education
Teodor Holhoș was born in the Romanian city of Alba Iulia, where he also attended high-school. He completed his medical studies in Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second largest city by population, graduating from the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in 2008, where he also completed his residency in ophthalmology in 2013. After becoming a licensed ophthalmologist, dr. Holhoș went to training stages in the US, Switzerland, Germany, and France.

Medical career
Dr. Holhoș is a certified laser-assisted refractive surgery specialist, performing most types of vision correction operations like photorefractive keratectomy, LASIK, and small incision lenticule extraction. He also performs other procedures like cataract surgery, phakic intraocular lens (IOL) implantation, glaucoma surgery, and retinal surgery. He was among the first eye surgeons in Romania, and the first in the country’s region of Transylvania, to perform the SMILE Pro operation, a minimally invasive procedure to correct refractive errors like myopia (nearsightedness) and astigmatism by slightly altering corneal curvature.

In SMILE Pro, a thin disk-like film called lenticule is excised from the stroma, the inner part of the cornea, and then removed through a small incision. SMILE Pro belongs to a group of surgical procedures that bypass the need to cut a corneal flap, thus better preserving corneal integrity. SMILE Pro is the second iteration of a flapless procedure developed by German group Zeiss.

The main advantage of SMILE Pro over the previous generation of the procedure (called ReLEx SMILE) is the much shorter lenticule excision time, under 10 seconds according to Zeiss guidelines, compared to 27-30 seconds for ReLEx SMILE. The significant shorter duration of this critical stage of the procedure increases patient comfort and decreases intraoperative risk.

With enough practice, surgeons can perform the excision of the lenticule faster than the 10 second reference time. According to Dr. Holhoș, the excision can be routinely executed in as little as 7 seconds.

Memberships and affiliations
Dr. Teodor Holhoș is a member of the Romanian Society of Ophthalmology (SRO). In 2023, he delivered a lecture on SMILE Pro as the future standard of choice in refractive surgery at SRO’s Annual Congress. Also in 2023, he was the first Romanian eye surgeon to deliver a presentation at the annual congress of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

Business endeavors
Dr. Teodor Holhoș opened his first eye care practice in 2011, in his home town of Alba Iulia. In 2013, he opened his first eye surgery clinic, also in Alba Iulia, under the “Dr. Holhoș” brand. Other clinics followed in the towns of Turda (2017), Mediaș (2018), and the cities of Sibiu (2019), Cluj-Napoca (2022), and Târgu Mureș (2024). The network's largest clinic is located in Cluj-Napoca, built at a reported cost of 1.7 million euros.

Currently, the “Dr. Holhoș” clinic network comprises six eye surgery clinics and 13 optical practices, all located within the region of Transylvania. As such, this is the largest independent and the largest regional network of eye surgery clinics in Romania.

Personal life
Dr. Teodor Holhoș is married and has two daughters.