Dr. Santa Heede began her medical education at the University in Riga, Latvia, she studied and received her medical degree at the University of Hamburg, Germany. After a Fellowship in Pediatric Ophthalmology and Adult Strabismus in 2010 at the Alberta Children’s Hospital at the University of Calgary, she did a year as locum at the IWK Health Centre, Dalhousie University, Halifax. Subsequently, she has worked as a senior physician-consultant and has lectured in this field at leading university hospitals in Germany.
In March 2023, she joined McMaster University's Department of Surgery in the Division of Ophthalmology as an Assistant Professor and has been teaching ophthalmology residents, and orthoptic students and officiates as an examiner for the European Board of Ophthalmology. In addition to her clinical work, she continues as medical director of screening and strabismus surgery projects in South and Central America.
In this week's core session of Grand Rounds, she shares why the first years of life are so important for vision development, how our eyes are controlled, and what is strabismus. She includes little findings in children’s eyes that can give a clue to severe pathologies in the body.