Beyond the Walls: Dry eye, downward dog, and doing medicine differently with Priya M. Mathews, MD, MPH

In this latest episode of the Ophthalmology Times® “Beyond the Walls” podcast, host Deborah Ristvedt, DO, sits down with Priya M. Mathews, MD, MPH, a cornea, cataract, and refractive surgeon, dry eye expert, and educator based in Sarasota, Florida, to explore the experiences and passions that have shaped her career and her approach to patient care. The conversation covers Mathews’ evolution as a surgeon and person, her commitment to building a dry eye center of excellence, her philosophy of proactive and holistic medicine, and the unexpected way yoga has woven itself into her clinical vision.

An extrovert who runs toward challenge

Mathews describes herself as a self-described extrovert who draws energy from the people around her—patients, colleagues, family. She reflects on how her sense of identity and purpose has evolved significantly since residency, where the focus was on learning and doing the right thing. Over time, she says, those right things became attached to people with stories, and those stories became relationships. “They become so much more than just their eye and the pathology,” she says.

Despite sharing the same training as her husband and fellow ophthalmologist, Joaquin De Rojas, MD, Mathews acknowledges that confidence came more slowly for her—something she attributes partly to gender dynamics and partly to temperament. Her advice to younger surgeons is direct: Say “yes” to the hard cases early, because everything gets easier from there.

Dry eye as a secret weapon

Mathews traces her passion for dry eye to a single mentor, Esen Akpek, MD, at Wilmer Eye Institute, who introduced her to a population of patients she describes as historically cast aside. “I felt really called to this population,” she says. That calling has since become a clinical differentiator.

About four years ago, Mathews launched a dedicated dry eye rehab clinic staffed by two physician assistants. Mathews views dry eye expertise not as a niche but as essential infrastructure for any high-volume cataract practice. “To really do premium lenses, you have to treat the ocular surface,” she says. “I would so much rather disappoint them before surgery than after.”

Yoga, vision loss, and the whole patient

Outside the operating room, Mathews is a certified Hatha Vinyasa yoga instructor—a credential she earned over two years during residency in New York City. She has taught yoga to visually impaired patients at a local Lighthouse organization, an experience she describes as humbling and transformative. She envisions a future where yoga plays a formal role in supporting patients facing irreversible vision loss, helping them maintain quality of life, balance, and proprioception as their vision changes. “I think the answer is yoga,” she says of how to support patients living with conditions like age-related macular degeneration. Ristvedt and Mathews reflect on the unique position that ophthalmologists occupy—the eye as a window into the body—and what it means to treat patients not just as a diagnosis, but as a whole person.

Beyond The Walls, hosted by Deborah G. Ristvedt, DO, and powered by Ophthalmology Times, is an editorially independent podcast series.