Glaucoma Fellowship review @ Minto Eye Hospital, Bengaluru

Minto Hosp is the Ophthalmic Hospital of BMCRI (Bengaluru Medical College and Research Institute)

Duration= 18 months.

The clinic days are pretty consistent, usually 9 AM to 4 PM in the glaucoma OPD. You'll see a huge variety of cases, honestly, it's like watching your textbook come to life. This means you'll get super confident with medical management of glaucoma. Seriously, you'll feel solid on that front.

Lasers & Surgical Time

When it comes to lasers, you'll get plenty of chances to do PIs (Peripheral Iridotomies) and even some Hyaloidotomies. Just a heads-up though, we didn't have an SLT/ALT machine available for training.

On the surgical side, the main focus is SICS Trabeculectomy and Phaco-Trabeculectomy.

What's cool is you can start getting hands-on pretty early, sometimes even in your first month, depending on your prior experience and how confident the consultants are in you. I personally started doing independent SICS Trabeculectomy around the 6-7 month mark. You'll likely get one or two SICS cases a week – again, it really depends on your progress and the consultant. A big thing to note is that we didn't get to do any independent phacoemulsification cases. You might observe shunts or tubes, but those aren't very common. We typically had two OT days a week, with each day having at least 2-3 trab /EUA with trab cases per consultant. We usually split these turns among the fellows.

Learning & Academics

The academic bit is largely self-driven. Don't expect a ton of formal lectures or structured classes. Most of your learning will happen during one-on-one discussions with consultants in clinic or during surgery. Presenting cases to them was definitely where a lot of the learning happened.

One of the best parts is that the work-life balance is really good. You'll be on a general duty rotation, maybe once or twice a month, depending on how many total fellows (all departments) are around. They recently started letting fellows operate or assist on duty cases like corneal tears if something comes up, which is a nice bonus.

The stipend was around ₹75,000 a month when I was there.

The fellowship is RGUHS accredited. You'll have an entrance exam (MCQs), usually announced in August. And there's an exit exam, both practical and theory, which is common for all RGUHS fellows.

If you're looking to become incredibly strong in medical glaucoma management and a pro at trabeculectomy surgery, this program is fantastic.

It's especially a great fit if you're okay with less hands-on experience in independent phaco, advanced lasers like SLT/ALT or MIGS.