Salomon Esquenazi, MD
Dr. Salomon Esquenazi is a sub-specialist in cornea, cataract, and refractive surgery with more than 35 years of experience diagnosing and treating conditions of the eye’s anterior segment.
Originally from Colombia, he founded the Olsabe Laser Center in Bogotá, where he served as medical director from 1994 to 2002, seeing as many as 70 to 80 patients a day and performing roughly 2,000 laser vision correction surgeries a year. He earned his medical degree from Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Bogotá, completed his internship at Hospital San José, and trained in ophthalmology at the Barraquer Institute of America under Dr. José Barraquer, widely regarded as the father of modern refractive surgery.
He later completed a second round of training in the United States: an internship in internal medicine at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, an ophthalmology residency at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, and a fellowship in cornea, cataract, and laser refractive surgery under Prof. Herbert Kaufman.
Before moving to South Florida, Dr. Esquenazi served as Research Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience at Louisiana State University, where he was a principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute-funded grant through the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, through 2010. He received the Chancellor’s Award and Lecture from the LSU Neuroscience Center of Excellence for his contributions to corneal wound-healing research.
Dr. Esquenazi has served as medical director of Airala Laser & Cataract Institute since 2012. He is a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and the American Society of Ophthalmology and Optometry.
Outside the office, he enjoys spending time with his wife and their three children, watching the New Orleans Saints on Sundays, playing golf, and working out.