Phaco-Refractive Surgery Fellowship review @ Uma Eye Hospital, Chennai

Review-

Uma Eye Clinic offers a pretty good, hands-on fellowship that’s intense but incredibly rewarding if you’re serious about learning.

Over 1.5 years (initially one year, now extended), you get to perform around 150 phacos, starting with your first 20–30 cases on a 3D operating microscope, which really helps with confidence and depth perception.

There’s some exposure to refractive work too, around 4-5 LASIK cases (both femtosecond and microkeratome), 1-2 SMILE surgeries, and 5-6 C3R cases. You also get to observe FLACS, corneal transplants, VR surgeries, and squint cases as and when they happen.

Your day runs from 9 AM to 7 PM, and you alternate between OT and OPD, which has a steady and diverse patient load. There are outreach camps on rotation during the week and one Sunday a month, but otherwise Sundays are off. Just note: there are only 2 holidays in the whole year, so it’s definitely a grind. No night duties!

The clinic is very well-equipped with machines like the Nikon Daytona, OCT, iTrace, Sirius, Lipiflow, and Lipiscan, and they even do Presbyond — so you’ll get to learn how to assess and prep those patients.

Retinal lasers are also something you can get involved in depending on interest and camp volume.

The OT setup is excellent, the phaco machines (Centurion and Whitestar Signature Pro) are top-tier, and overall, the environment is supportive. Everyone is approachable, though of course there’s the usual chatter and politics that come with any busy place.

All in all, it’s a packed schedule with great surgical exposure, especially if you go in with clarity on what you want. If you put in the effort, you’ll come out well-trained and quite satisfied.

I did around 110 phaco cases during my one-year fellowship. At the time (2024), the rules were a bit different, there wasn’t a fixed number of surgeries promised, so I’m not entirely sure what the current setup is. But based on how things worked then, I’d estimate that 150 cases over 1.5 years averaging 1-2 cases per week.

The exact number you get depends a lot on how many fellows are in the program with you. In my batch, there were 3 of us, and usually 2 phaco cases were posted per day on regular OT days.

Occasionally, foreign candidates would come in, not all of them come for high-volume training. Some just do 10-15 cases over a few days, so even in those weeks, you’ll likely get one case.

But if someone comes for a larger volume (like 40-50 cases), then you might not get posted for a week. That said, it does balance out and picks up again soon after.

You can’t expect a case every single day, but overall the hands-on numbers we got were close to what was mentioned during the interview.

Another review of the same program from another past fellow who did it when it was a one year program-

Hi there! So, my training was quite intense, with a lot of exposure to advanced cataract training. We started with 3D, which is super helpful for understanding depth perception. We also used CTR, pupil expansion devices, multiple phaco machines, and various phaco tips. The refractive workup included various trifocal, toric, post-LASIK workups and options for obtaining uncorrected 6/6 N6 vision. We also received hands-on training for LASIK, smile, and PRK procedures. They also give exposure to abberometry profile. The workup and post-procedure management, including complications treatment, were also covered. I liked my time there, it was a good experience for me.