Deevia Kotecha left Withington in 2012 to pursue a medical degree at the University of Leicester. She describes the recent success she’s had in publishing a paper and her excitement at developing her clinical career:

“I am currently in my third year of studying Medicine at the University of Leicester. At the end of my second year I spent my summer holidays working with the Department of Academic Surgery at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Manchester. During this time, I worked alongside clinical research fellows and carried out research into a condition called ‘Pelvic Vein Incompetence’, which many medical professionals currently fail to diagnose properly when women present to healthcare services with chronic pelvic pain.

Currently, an investigation called ‘Venography’ is considered to be the gold standard for diagnosing Pelvic Vein Incompetence but this is an invasive procedure. The research I worked on showed that Ultrasound is in fact just as good, if not better at diagnosing Pelvic Vein Incompetence. This is also a non-invasive procedure which means there is a reduced risk of infection and patients are happier to have it done.

The research paper that I wrote on the work that I did alongside my colleagues is currently in the process of publication. I decided to take my work one step further and submitted an abstract to a National Surgical Undergraduate Conference that was being held in Manchester in November 2014, so that I could both showcase my research and receive feedback from my peers. I was invited to come and give an oral presentation at the Conference and explain my research in more detail. I was the youngest medical student to give an oral presentation at this conference, competing alongside medical students who were all in their final year of study. I was awarded the runner-up prize for Best Oral Presentation on Surgical Research in this national competition for undergraduate research in Surgery. My presentation title was ‘Transvaginal Doppler Ultrasound for detecting Pelvic Vein Incompetence in women’.

I’ve decided to follow my passion for Medical Research and I am undertaking an Intercalated BSc next year in Medical Research in at the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, an internationally renowned institution focused on the delivery of field-changing mechanistic insights into toxicology and disease, where I will be working closely with postdoctoral scientists, PhD students and clinicians. My research is focused on combining both histological and molecular techniques to study lung tumour biology. The title of my project is ‘In situ quantification of genomic instability in lung adenocarcinomas and in particular it’s value as a biomarker and the biological implications.’ In addition to this, I have recently been recruited by an evidence-based healthcare initiative and have started writing articles for their website on evidence-based Medicine. In the future, I want to pursue a career in Academic Medicine and work in both patient care and research as a scientifically trained clinician.”

If you would like to get in touch with Deevia, please contact the Development Office.