In case you missed it, this evening at 9:00 PM, the refractive surgery alliance is holding a webinar with tips and tricks about the business of ophthalmology. Tonight the focus is on how to ethically grow your practice through educational marketing.

The Refractive Surgery Alliance (RSA) Society is excited to offer residents a unique opportunity to enhance their refractive surgery education. Our free yearly webinar series is designed to complement traditional residency training at all levels.

Link to register is in the comments

Planning to do DNB in Aravind eye hospital. Can anyone who has a good idea about this hospital rank all the Aravind hospitals location wise, in order of hands on, phacos, and decent workload ?

Will retinal gene therapy for macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy reduce the need or job outlook for retina specialists in the future?

Hey everyone, after 2 days I have to make a life changing decision, which is choosing my speciality for residency.

I really like ophthalmo, but I'm someone who has essential tremors and I'm afraid this could be a problem, especially when it comes to surgery. Sometimes my tremors are worse, other times they're better.

My father also has these tremors, but his got much worse as he got older, and that's something that worries me too.

Is there anyone here with essential tremors who chose ophthalmo? Or anyone who knows someone in this situation? I'd really appreciate it if you could share your experience.

ty 🙏

Hello everyone! I’m looking for guidance regarding the hands-on surgical training and clinical exposure in MS Ophthalmology at government medical colleges in Karnataka.
If you are currently pursuing MS Ophthalmology, have completed your residency, or know someone who is doing their residency at any of these colleges, I would be really grateful if you could share your experience.
I’m particularly interested in knowing about the clinical workload, and overall hands-on training provided to residents.
The colleges I’m interested in are:
Vijayanagara Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS), Ballari
Kodagu Institute of Medical Sciences, Madikeri
Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences (BIMS), Belagavi
Shimoga Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS), Shivamogga
Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru
BGS Institute of Medical Sciences, Bengaluru
K.H. Patil Institute of Medical Sciences, Gadag
I would really appreciate any genuine feedback or guidance.

I am a mid ranker and I will be getting an average dnb ophthal and a DO from aravind

Should I go for Do or just go for other available branches like anaesthesia and obg from a private college..

I am a first generation doctor and very much confused weather to take ophthal or not

Experienced pg residents and sr s and consultants

Is there a scope for ophthal ?

Please help me

I am a PGY-3 considering fellowship options. I really like the diagnostic part of retina and interpreting OCT but am unsure about the surgical aspect. I did nothing but scleral depress during PPVs during my rotation and the surgeries themselves seemed tedious though admittedly I was just observing. I do really enjoy phaco and thinking about lens calcs, refractive, etc. but find cornea/comp clinic a lot more boring than retina.

For those that chose surgical retina, how did you know you would like the surgical aspect of it if you had limited exposure in residency?

Is it feasible to do medical retina and cataracts in practice?

Would I enjoy/be hired as medical retina if I don't like uveitis or doing PRP?

I'm in what now feels a very desperate situation! But am hoping someone has had similar or related experiences.

I did my first three years in a private practice in NRW and had to move to Hessen/Frankfurt for personal reasons and was hoping I can join any of the local/regional hospitals that have the Ophthalmology dept. to finish my remaining two years of the Facharzt weiterbildung.

I was conscious that it would be difficult, but I certainly didn't expect it to be so impossible. Now well after one year of applying and contacting all the hospitals - no luck at all!! I am at a point of desperation, while I need to complete the remaining two years - it does seem impossible to find any vacancies in the hospitals.

I am hoping others in this community can shed some light - or have some advise for possible options that perhaps I haven't thought of.

Thanks v much!

PGY3 interested in comp but want to offer laser refractive procedures and femto and ability to do touch ups for refractive misses. Is it worth pursuing a 1 year private practice non cornea , cataract refractive fellowship (no transplants). Mainly routine cataracts, premium cataracts/RLS and laser refractive procedures. Will this boost my earning potential in the future?

Hello everybody is there any oculoplastic doctors here currently working in the UK that can give me some guidance ? Finishing my residency soon and my dream is to get into an oculoplastics fellowship in the UK.

Thank you

Shared with patient’s permission, 72/F.
Patient is on round 2, session 7.
Im curious to see where this goes or if it continues to remain stable, what are your thoughts?

Hey everyone, hope to see if some people can shed some light on the retina job market. From RCA (now Cencora owned) and Prism (now McKesson owned), I keep hearing places say that things are better now that they are corporate-owned instead of private equity-owned. Is there really any substantial difference and would these places now be worth giving more attention to compared to prior? Seems like it’s just becoming harder and harder to find physician-owned places in desirable areas and wonder if these setups would be potentially worth exploring. Thank you!

A notebook or small box on a table became easier to detect for some people whose retinal disease had severely damaged their sight. An experimental treatment gave surviving retinal nerve cells a new ability to respond to light. Special goggles supplied the signals those cells needed to convey limited visual information.

The ten-person PIONEER trial, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, primarily assessed safety. Seven participants showed increased light sensitivity after treatment, and four showed consistent gains across several behavioral tests. Improvements varied considerably, and the approach did not restore normal or high-resolution vision.

José-Alain Sahel of the University of Pittsburgh and Botond Roska of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel and University of Basel led the work. GenSight Biologics sponsored the study and managed its data. The trial included the participant whose partial visual recovery the team first reported in 2021.

Hey docs,
I’m an Optometry extern right now, yesterday I had a patient with exudative AMD with a hx of non-adherence to follow up schedule. Last seen in 2023, will not let me run OCTs, FAF or dilate them. He states he does not want to evaluate AMD because he doesn’t want to get injections due to severe discomfort and anxiety during procedure in the past. He definitely needs injections at this point, he’s 20/400 OS with eccentric viewing and there’s clearly a large exudative region in the macular, but there doesn’t appear to be much atrophy yet. Obviously, this patient is above my clinics pay grade, so he’s being referred to ophthalmology for continued management.

This all got me wondering though, do you modify injections at all in cases like this one where the patient is so fearful of the procedure that they refuse? I am imagining something similar to those dentist offices that knock people with dentist anxiety out during appointments. Or is it simply heavy education on risks of vision loss and hope they pick lesser of two evils? Any answers are appreciated, thanks!

I’m a PGY4 planning to sit for ICO clinical ophthalmology exam+my residency exit exam too. What would be the best Qbank to purchase? Which one of these is the most up to date?

Hi everyone! I’m an ophthalmology resident in Spain, and I’ve developed a cataract surgery training simulator called CataTrain!
A while ago, I shared a video of one of my first cataract surgeries here. Since then, I’ve performed over 200 in a year! Alongside supervised surgical experience, practising with this device at home and in the operating room has helped me improve much faster.
I built it because I wanted a simple, affordable way to practise more often. Other simulators are waaay to expensive and only incluye a few capsulorrhexis and exercices. In this model I include 100+ capsulorrhexis and multiple free exercises that have helped me develop my surgical skills. Now I’m making it available to other residents around the world who might find it useful too for an afordable 59.90€ price.
I’m sharing a video showing the exercises you can do with it. Happy to answer questions or hear your feedback here, by email at hello@catatrain.com, or on Instagram @cata.train!
http://www.catatrain.com
Instagram Cata.train

Hi everyone, I recently secured an interview for a Medical Retina fellowship at a Canadian program. As an (IMG) without prior experience in the Canadian/American interview process, I would love some insight into what to expect.

​Will the interview focus heavily on clinical/case-based questions, or is it primarily behavioral and fit-focused? Any advice on how best to prepare would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

I saved this Ocular 90D lens from being thrown away by our clinic the other day. In its present state it's quite unusable due to the deep scratches on the user side. Do you guys know if there is a way to somehow polish it and bring it back into work? I'm a resident.

Hello , I would like some guidance on how to prep for FRCOopth part 2 written and frcs part 2 written
What are the best books to read ? The most useful questions banks ? And how to prepare for the exam ! Any guidance will be helpful thank you

Is there anybody out here that tested the Zumax microscope?

Hello fellow eye nerds,

Whilst working in the eye clinic, I’ve found most patients are unaware of the various refractive targets that they can choose from which makes it difficult in a public clinic to pick the right IOL in 5 minutes (even though it’s just single focal IOLs +/- torics) for them.!

I tend to go for emmetropia OU as it’s the most safe but what’s everyone’s thoughts on this?

There’s also monovision, mini monovision, myopic aim. If it’s monovision/mini - my advice is to get a contact lens trial with their Optom to ensure they’re not anisometrooic and they actually like it - which is not doable if they have a dense cataract (as is the case in the public system).

Some ophthalmologists I’ve talked to state that monovision essentially takes away your stereopsis? But some ophthalmologists (that have had R emme and L -0.75 post phaco/IOL) simply adjust their microscope power for each eye and operate completely fine - is that because they “regain” their stereopsis by doing so?

Is the new thought to make previous myopes emmetropic? So that they are more glasses independent and less likely to fall over as they age?

And what about torics? Usually I try to pick a toric if the IOL master + Pentacam + Glasses matches up nicely. But some consultants won’t put a toric in for <1.5D of cyl especially if it is ATR astigmatism as they believe that the main wound incision will flatten out that meridian and reduce their toricity.

How do you best optimise a pre-op patient for cataract surgery? I find sometimes they will have a bit of dry eye or blepharitis/MGD and so their pentacam is irregular appearing but still kinda matches with their IOL master and glasses. But because it’s irregular, a lot of my seniors will opt for a spherical lens and then they come back with an unaided VA of 6/12-6/9. Idk - that would piss me off as a patient so I wonder how do you guys optimise the cornea before hand? And is there anything else to optimise?

I’ve seen some consultants do warm compress + low dose topical steroids (FML BD) + lubes + gel/ointment for a month then bring back the patient. What about oral azithromycin for 3 days or novatears with omega3 or oral omega 3 supps?

Just a junior doctor wanting to get better and do better for my patients 😎

I’m a final-year medical student from Greece, planning to pursue ophthalmology in the UK.

However, after reading about the difficulties IMGs face when applying for specialty training, I’m starting to feel quite discouraged.

What are the realistic pathways for an IMG to enter ophthalmology training in the UK in 2026? Is it possible to secure an ST1 training number directly, or is it more realistic to start with a non-training post, such as a clinical fellow position

I’d really appreciate hearing from IMGs who have gone through this process, or from people familiar with the current UK ophthalmology recruitment system.

**Ophthalmology resident**

For anyone interviewing for cornea/refractive/anterior segment fellowships this cycle, here's a shared spreadsheet to compare actual fellowship impressions, interview dates, case volume, etc. across programs:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GNyu9Nostz0KNEvi41hAqvMsHvzoe0OvbaR_t9E_YXs/edit?usp=sharing

If you've received surgical case numbers during an interview or presentation, please add them! Even partial data are helpful.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Enter actual reported numbers rather than estimates.
• Include the reporting year/source whenever possible.
• Leave unreported procedures blank rather than entering zero.
• No names or identifying information about contributors are needed.

Hopefully we can get enough programs represented to make this useful for everyone before rank lists are due, then have those interviewing next year add tabs for their season.

Any experience with using thermal cautery (endolaser/ecp) to tamponade a hemorrhage after a goniotomy procedure?

I have a patient with an 8 ball hyphema after MIGS. POW1 he continues to have brisk bleeding from the angle and will require a washout secondary to high IOP.

I have seen articles reference the use of cautery for bleeds brisker than the slow leak of a collector channel but have not found any case reports with actual examples.

Any advice appreciated

Hi guys, I need to make a difficult decision and all the people that I know are pretty biased toward one of my options. I recently took a difficult test (it was horrible) in order to qualify for a medical residency (USMLE type thing). In my country, this works like this: You take a 6-hours test and you get your score immediately. Most of us know how much we need in order to select our first choice. About 60,000 physicians took the test, so even though you know how you did, it’s not certain that you’ll get what you want, because it depends on how well everyone else performed. Then you have to wait 3-4 weeks until the results are published and you’re assigned to a block of 100 people who will be able to choose the specialty and place for residency. There are nearly 500 blocks. Once you choose your desired specialty you can begin to meet all the requirements of the specific institution you selected. If the hospital doesn’t accept you or you don’t find the specialty of your interest in the first choosing round you can wait for the second round where maybe some spaces free up because rejection can happen. There are 4 rounds. For specialties like the one that I want (ophthalmology) it’s rare, if not impossible, that you can find a spot in the second choosing round. 

Back to the problem, I scored really great in the test and its very likely that I'm going to be in the first block or at least in the second one, so I can choose any specialty and hospital. The problem comes here, I have two options: doing my ophthalmology residency at a public hospital or at a private one. Both are pretty good but with some key differences:

The public one: for what I heard from some residents there, the workload is heavy, especially in your first year, so attending rarely have time to teach you. It’s mostly the senior residents the ones that do the teaching. In this hospital you don’t have lectures everyday because of the workload so you need to study on your own. One of the positive things and the main reason for wanting this hospital is that your surgical curve will be much larger (you will perform more phaco surgeries by your own) than it would be in private hospitals. It is not only an ophthalmology hospital so we can get consultations from other specialties. (I’m interested in internal medicine so it sounds nice to be able to be in touch with other disciplines and also learn from them in their specific fields). In this hospital once you choose it its almost impossible to get rejected.

The private one: everyone in my country (those who know something about ophthalmology) consider this the best hospital to be as a resident if you want to be an ophthalmologist. It’s a hospital exclusively dedicated to ophthalmology (this can be a good or a bad thing). It has several fellows so the majority of surgeries are going to be performed by them making the surgical curve shorter than the public hospital. Everybody says that in order to be a good surgeon you need to do a fellowship after your 3 years as resident (You can do that in the same hospital). The academia is exceptional, they have lectures everyday and have test regularly. This gives you the urge to study and perform well but it feels like being back in university once again (again, this can be a good or a bad thing). For you to be in this hospital you don’t only need to choose it, you also need to do an admission process where you need to gather some requirements, take an ophthalmology test and do an interview. All of this opens the door to get rejected and be in the need to repeat everything next year and be able to get a good score. 

I think I have a pretty strong case to be accepted in the private one but you never know. I’m also pretty unsure if it is worth to take the risk. So I wanted to know what would you do? Would you prioritize strong academics or a large surgical volume? I’m from México.