Polona Jaki Mekjavic

Polona Jaki Mekjavic M.D., Ph.D. is an Ophthalmologist at the University Clinical Centre Eye Hospital, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Jaki Mekjavic conducted her doctoral research at the University of Pisa (Italy), and completed part of her clinical fellowship at Moorfields Hospital in London (UK). Her clinical work and research focuses on treatment of Graves’ Orbitopathy and Medical retina. She heads the clinic for thyroid orbitopathies at the Eye Clinic, and has been instrumental in introducing anti-VEGF treatment of age-related macular degeneration in Slovenia. Dr. Jaki Mekjavic is a member of the European Retina Society (EURETINA), the International Fluorescein Angiography Club (iFAN) and European Society of Vision Research (EVER).  

Dr. Polona Jaki Mekjavic’s  research interests in Environmenal Physiology have led to the development of a novel method for assessing decompression severity in divers. Together with colleagues from the Royal Institute of Technology (Ola Eiken and Mikael Gennser) and Institute Jozef Stefan (Igor Mekjavic) she has demonstrated that post-dive tear film bubbles correlated with the duration and depth of a dive, as well as with the breathing mixture. Over the past 10 years, she has conducted pre- and post- bedrest examination of subjects participating in such 35 day normoxic studies, during which they were either lying horizontal or at an angle of 6° head down. As a result of her interest and experience with high altitude retinopathy, she has also participated in hypoxic confinement studies, evaluating the effect of hypoxic exposure on retinal vessels.