Cornea & Anterior Segment Fellowship review @ Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, Tamil Nadu

It's technically 1.5 yrs long but they might ask you to work at one of their peripheral centres first for 6 months - 1 year, especially if your SICS numbers are low.

Cornea in Madurai has the highest number of fellow intake so dept is crowded.

Cataract surgery opportunities are variable between fellows, depends on your skill, speed and lack of complications. OT sisters have a big role in deciding which fellow will be called to operate.

That said, corneal surgery numbers are more or less same for every fellow- they give at least 50 keratoplasties (including therapeutic & optical PKs).

But you get only penetrating keratoplasties there.

Generally no hands-on given for lamellar surgeries generally, except to 1 or 2 fellows based on the Chief's discretion.

Ocular surface disorders like AMG, MMG done but no SLET.

Clinical exposure is very good, you see almost every textbook case 

Lots and lots of all kinds of corneal ulcers- you get fed up after a while.

They have all the diagnostic equipments, you can learn anterior segment photography also.

Surgically you get keratoplasties, C3Rs, pterygiums, conjunctival grafts, few corneal tear repairs, amniotic membrane grafting; no corneal rings.

There is 1 week posting for fellows for Refractive procedures- no hands-on, only observation.

In my time they did LASIK, PRK but there was no SMILE or any of the other latest refractive procedures.. don't know the state now. 

They give you only SICS chances in Aravind, no Phaco training. I find this a drawback compared to Cornea programs in other places like MM Joshi or LVP that include phaco training within their fellowships.

However, you can fill that lacuna with Aravind's paid short term phaco training after finishing fellowship.