John Khadem, MD, MPH

I can’t say enough positive words about doctor Khadem. My mom was referred to him as an emergency for macular degeneration. He came in on his day off to do tests and give her an eye injection. He spent a lot of time with us discussing the diagnosis and treatment options. He acts with confidence and we both trusted him fully from that first day. He answered all of our questions and spent a lot of time with us (unlike a lot of other doctors). My mom got three injections from him since then and her sight significantly improved. His office staff is also very nice, always helpful and very professionally run. The office is clean and pleasant.
I would recommend doctor Khadem to anyone with retina problems.

Dr. Khadem is an extraordinarily skilled and compassionate surgeon. I had both emergency laser surgery for a torn retina and, later, a vitrectomy under his care. I still see him for aftercare and have total faith in him. His staff is terrific. Yes, you need to allot 2 – 2 ½ hours for visits, but when you see him, you have his full attention. It’s also worth remembering that, as in my case, sometimes there are emergency appointments that require immediate laser surgery which inevitably increases wait time for other patients. He explains in layman’s language what’s going on with your eyesight, what to expect, and once you get to know him a bit, you’ll see a sense of humor there too. He’s a great doctor and a great guy.

While Dr. Pieroni and Dr. Khadem are good doctors with good bedside manner, the practice is extremely inefficiently managed. Overbooking seems to be standard. I have been a patient for around 5 years and go in yearly for check ups. Every time that I have had an appointment, I end up spending a minimum of 2 hours waiting with a recent max of 4 hours. If you make an appointment, be prepared to make an afternoon of it.

I’m not sure why the negative reviews about waiting an hour or two like Jo R…
My mother was a patient of his, she had a tear in the retina. He was super friendly and explained thoroughly the procedure that needed to be done.
Surgery was a week after the examination and went smoothly. Started on time and he was done within an hour.
Followup the next day to remove the patch, that was literally a 2 min wait.

PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT TAKE SOOOOO LONG TO SEE A PATIENT!!! PLEASE AGAIN… This is why we hardly come back so often… just came back and have been waiting for over 2 HOURS! U know we, the patients, also have another life other than sitting and waiting to be called… I’m being honest and anyone that reads this from the office who knows me knows that I really hate lies,
Try to fix this issue it’s for ur own good no on else’s, well maybe us the patients that have to wait… LOL

Just had my first visit with Dr. Khadem and I was very pleased. Context — I’m from Canada, needed to find a specialist here in NYC.
This was my first check up. I was brought in for some diagnostics shortly after I checked in. The technican was great — Rob I think his name is with the blue lab coat. He was super friendly and we had a nice chat about Canada and some of his travels. There was some confusion as another woman brought me back and started taking my medical history but the first tech had done that already. I then was quickly seen for some testing and the tech was all business — efficient. He dilated me and I sat and waited.
Dilating your eyes takes time — you can’t rush this so I had to wait in the waiting area for about an hour which is in line with what I would expect. I was then brought into the Dr’s office for my exam. He asked me a few questions — we joked about his son getting on Tumblr and he performed the exam. I liked his thumb method (look where you thumb is) and the fact that chair you are in lies flat automatically (no weird neck contortions).
All of his equipment was modern and I was interested in seeing the pictures and test results which he happily shared with me. He warned me about making sure to treat my dry eyes and told me to come in ASAP if ‘anything doesn’t feel right. Don’t hesitate’.
I was there for a total of 2.5 hours. Which was in line with my previous experiences.
I was very pleased and am happy to be a new patient.

I have been a patient of Dr. Khadem for many years (6+ to be exact) and was shocked and upset to read the negative review posted here. I can quite honestly say that my vision, in both eyes, was saved by Dr. Khadem — period. He has performed vitrectomies on both of my eyes as well as laser and injections and it is because of his care that I can not only see, but see even better than I had prior to all of this happening. I have a lot of other health problems too and experience many different doctor offices (unfortunately) and quite honestly I can say that Dr. Khadem is one of the best qualified and most personable doctors that I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with and I consider myself lucky to have him as my retina doctor.
Are the appointments long? YES. Is the waiting room often crowded? YES. Do you know what this means? It means that there are a lot of people with retina problems and that their office is trying to accommodate as many people as they can. We are talking about you possibly going BLIND if these problems are not addressed. Seems like people complaining about waiting FOREVER (which is usually a few hours — a far cry from «FOREVER») are missing the big picture (figuratively for sure and possibly literally as I stated above.)
The laser procedure is indeed a very painful and unpleasant experience but so are many medical procedures. He is doing this to save your eyesight, don’t you understand?!
People that complain so eagerly remind me of a great Louis CK skit where he talks about how people complain on flights when the reality is that «you’re sitting in a chair, IN THE SKY! Not long ago you would have been considered A GOD!» Well, not long ago (as in, within my lifetime) most of the problems I had with my eyes would have resulted in me being BLIND but thanks to Dr. Khadem I am not.

I’m surprised by the negative review for Dr Khadem.
Last week I bought new glasses and I had a routine eye exam with an optician. I got a bit of a scare when the optician performed a retina scan and noticed I had a spot on my retina. He recommended I get it looked at and he referred me to Dr. Khadem since he is a retina specialist.
I went to Dr. Khadem’s office this past Saturday. I had several eye technicians work with me before I saw the doctor. These technicians dilated my eyes and performed a variety of tests and scans. I was very stressed and nervous about the exams. The technicians were all very friendly and knowledgeable and explained everything they were doing. I felt safe working with them.
My test results were sent to Dr. Khadem and he analyzed them for me. Thankfully, the spot on my retina was a harmless birthmark. The doctor said that my eyes were fine and joked that he didn’t want to see me again.
The doctor was a bit hurried and seemed very busy. However, he was friendly and answered all my questions.
I had a good experience at Dr. Khadem’s office and I would recommend him.

If I could give a location zero stars, I would. New Yorkers needing retinal specialists, BEWARE!
I’ve been going to the practice of Doctors Pieroni and Khadem for about four months, after being referred here by my eye doctor because of some tears in my retinas. My first few appointments were a mixed bag — in some I was checked in, taken back for the usual up-​front eye tests and given eye dilation drops, sent back out for the requisite 30 minutes for my eyes to fully dilate, and then seen — one hour appointment, max. More frequently, I would arrive to a packed waiting room and wait for an hour before even being seen. But one of my most recent experiences takes the cake and is the impetus for wanting a new retinal specialist:
I was going in for the *last* of my laser surgeries to correct my retinal tears. My doctor is actually Dr. Pieroni, whose bedside manner I can now appreciate when compared with Dr. Khadem. I checked in with the receptionist and sat down to wait. After about five minutes I was called back for the eye tests and dilation drops by one of the teenagers that inexplicably seem to be working there. Seriously, they are staffed by TEENAGERS, that spend their time schlepping patients around from room to room, administering some of the more basic tests, and GOSSIPING the whole time about their lives and what they are going to do that night. Which I find a titch unprofessional for a doctor’s office, but nevermind that. After 30 minutes they call my name and I think to myself «great, this is going to be a quickie!» I go back and they inform me that actually, Dr. Pieroni is on vacation in France, they have tried to call me to reschedule and left a voicemail. Turns out they had my phone number incorrect, failed to notify me when I checked in, failed to notify me again when they took me back to dilate my eyes, and just now realized this was a problem.
So, I might have been OK with the phone number mix-​up, or not realizing when I checked in (under DR. PIERONI, mind you). I would have been understandably pissed, but gotten over it. But the fact that they actually started to process me as a patient and dilated my eyes before realizing the problem? No medical practice should be able to make THAT many mistakes. These are my EYES for god-​sake, if you can’t manage to figure out my paperwork which is pretty simple, how can I trust you not to eff up my EYES!!!
They tell me I can either reschedule or I can see Dr. Khadem. Seeing as I have a JOB and have already taken off the afternoon for this (and many other!) appointment, my eyes are already dilated (effects usually last about 3 hours), its already a wasted afternoon for me, so I say yes please, I’d like to see Dr. Khadem. But WHEN? They assure me I am on the list to be seen and they will call me back soon.
So, I head back to the waiting room and proceed to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And I see everyone who has come in after me taken back and be seen. And I wait some more. Finally, after an hour an a half I loudly complain to the receptionist who promises to check things out and lo and behold! Someone calls me back.
I finally meet with Dr. Khadem, whose bedside manner is less than desirable. I express my displeasure with this fiasco, with which he responds with «Well you’re really lucky. Your eyes are a mess.» Huh.
He then asks me if I want to continue with my last laser session. Uh, duh, I didn’t wait around your office for two hours only to be condescendingly told I was lucky to see you. So I get sent to sit outside the laser room, where someone is already in there. And, I wait some more (I think about fifteen minutes). Finally he pops into that room, converses with whoever is in there, and sends them away. My turn. And, he administers the lasers in the worst experience I have had to date (out of four, so I’m not exactly inexperienced). The session is long, unrelenting, and painful, and I wish to god that Dr. Pieroni is there because she is much nicer and gentler. Finally, we finish and dazed and blinded, I am handed a tissue to wipe the tears and eye-​lens-​goop sliding down my face. I am then snapped at to «stop touching your eye, you’ll give yourself a lesion!» and told that if I need more time to recover (more than the two minutes I’ve been there waiting for my vision to return so I can see to walk out), I can sit outside in the waiting area because they need the room.
So. That sums up my experience. Oh, and after that session I developed a liquid build-​up in my eye (sounds gross right?), which has never happened before, had the longest bout of blurry vision (lasting into the beginning of my vacation the next week), and my pupils have still not returned to normal (the left one is bigger than the right, a month after this all went down).
So. While I would maybe recommend Dr. Pieroni, I cannot endorse her practice that made the gross mistake of processing me when she wasn’t even here, and I definitely do NOT recommend Dr. Khadem.