FRCOphth Part 1 Investigations & Statistics

Cover the physical principles behind the tests you will spend your career ordering: optical coherence tomography, A scan and B scan ultrasound, fluorescein and indocyanine green angiography, corneal topography and biometry. Add the electrodiagnostic tests, meaning the electroretinogram, the electro-oculogram and the visual evoked potential, along with the basics of perimetry. Questions here usually turn on why a technique produces the image or trace it does, so revise the principle rather than memorising normal values.

This half covers data types and distributions, mean against median, standard deviation against standard error, confidence intervals and p values, type I and type II error, statistical power, and choosing between parametric and non-parametric tests. Epidemiology adds incidence and prevalence, sensitivity and specificity, positive and negative predictive value, screening, bias and confounding. Study design covers randomised controlled trials, cohort and case-control studies, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Most of it reduces to a small set of repeatable calculations and one two-by-two table.

Statistics rewards drilling far more than reading, because the same few calculations keep reappearing in different clothes. Work timed sets of exam-style SBAs, rebuild the two-by-two table by hand each time instead of trying to recall which formula goes where, and use the referenced explanations to check your method rather than just your answer. Treat the imaging half as a separate exercise, revised more like physiology, since it tests understanding of a mechanism rather than a calculation.