Don't miss: General Surgery Revision Course in RSM this weekend (Sat)

The Royal Society of Medicine near Oxford Road, London is a great resource of learning and clinical development. They have a variety of interesting and very useful revision courses for medical students not to mention a huge range of lectures and talks covering all relevant areas in medicine and surgery running constantly over the year.

I have attended a medical student revision day, which was very helpful indeed. They provide handouts and the speakers are very enthusiastic consultants in London. RSM headquarters is a nice building situated next door to the busy shopping place in Oxford Road. So, you can attend the course and go shopping afterwards!

I highly recommend the surgery course, especially for those of you who are interested in surgery and has finals coming up.

You can have open heart surgery whilst wide awake

This is a real image. Click here to read more about it

Apparently, this open heart surgery procedure, which only uses an epidural as an anesthetic was developed in India and you can buy a DVD to learn how to do it.

Perfect Vision Without Surgery

I don't if others with sub-perfect vision feel the same way but I find it really annoying to have to choose between glasses and contact lenses to be able to function in society. Surgical vision correction has its side effects and even though I have family that have undergone the procedure, as an aspiring surgeon, I'm not sure it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Solution? I've come across an old technique that promises perfect 20/20 vision without surgical correction. It's called Orthokeratology (or Ortho-k for short). You wear contact lenses at night that have been custom designed for your eyes. These contact lenses reshape your cornea so that you wake up everyday with perfect vision (kind of like a retainer for the eyes). Unfortunately, this solution only lasts the day.

The only refractive surgery I would consider is insertion of intrastromal corneal ring segments (Intacs), where a new lens is implanted in your eyes. This avoids damage to your cornea and the lens can be changed as your vision changes. As this procedure has only been approved to low degrees of myopia I will have to wait!