Like many doctors, when I entered the university I thought that I would work in another medical specialty: I planned to become a traumatologist and even worked from the first year in a trauma center.

A close friend of mine, who was working in optics at the time, advised me to take a closer look at the profession of an ophthalmologist.

I met the head of the Department of Eye Diseases, Professor A. I. Eremenko, who got me interested in this field from the very first conversation!

At the same time, I began preparing to enter residency in the specialty “Ophthalmology”.

Семыкин Виктор Дмитриевич. О специалисте

how did I become a surgeon?

Following the example of my teacher, Professor A.V. Malyshev, I also wanted to become a vitreoretinal surgeon.

In 2019, I completed courses in this area
and in the same year, I performed my first retinal detachment surgery.

By that time I had been performing ophthalmological surgeries for quite some time. But my passion in the profession was the opportunity to operate on the posterior segment of the eye.

Only when I reached this level and began to perform such operations - I allowed myself to consider that I had fulfilled my dream and became an ophthalmologist-surgeon.

interest in research

Back in 2009, when I was still a resident, my very first guide to ophthalmology, Professor Eremenko, and I took part in the “Congress of Ophthalmologists” in Anapa.

That was my first exposure to the scientific ophthalmology community, seeing people who were fluent in medical English, conducting research and creating new treatments and methods in their clinical work.

I was so interested in the possibility of offering something new in medicine! I kept this aspiration even later, when I became a doctor and together with Prof. A.V. Malyshev started to collect materials for my future thesis.

In 2016, I defended my Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Clinical studies of vitreoretinal surgery for severe destruction of the vitreous body.”