The Current Transplant Surgery Oral Exam: Two Sessions, Four Examiners, and Three Submitted Cases
A source-grounded map of the TACC oral examination, the broader certification pathway, and the exact boundary between official records and SurgiTest educational rehearsal.
Key takeaways
- TACC currently describes two 50-minute online sessions with a break between them and two examiners in each session.
- Candidates submit three post-fellowship transplant cases at oral-exam registration; TACC encourages interesting or technically complicated cases.
- The post-fellowship surgical log and the three oral-exam case submissions are separate official records.
- Current organ-specific questioning is kidney and/or liver according to the candidate’s Certificate of Completion and current practice.
- SurgiTest includes broader transplant domains for education without presenting them as separately weighted official TACC rooms.
Eligibility and sequence
Place the oral examination inside the full TACC certification pathway
The oral examination is one component of a credentialing pathway for abdominal transplant surgeons rather than a stand-alone commercial course examination.
TACC’s public pathway describes a single Certified Abdominal Transplant Surgeon certification rather than separate kidney, liver, pancreas, or intestinal certificates. Applicants generally enter the process after completing a TACC-accredited abdominal transplant fellowship, entering independent practice, and meeting licensing, reference, professional-summary, and operative-experience requirements.
The public oral-exam information states that candidates must have completed a TACC-accredited fellowship since 2019 and have at least one year in practice. The certification page describes applicants as one to five years into practice. Candidates should use their current application portal and direct TACC correspondence if a personal eligibility detail differs from a general public description.
A premium preparation plan therefore has to do more than memorize transplant facts. It must show that the candidate can select recipients and donors, make ethical and technically sound decisions, perform or supervise complex operations, recognize competing causes of graft dysfunction, and own longitudinal outcomes across the transplant continuum.
| Record or step | Public purpose | SurgiTest boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Post-fellowship surgical log | Documents operative experience during certification application; the public pathway describes a maximum of 100 cases. | Do not upload the official log. Use a separate private breadth audit without identifiers. |
| Three oral-exam cases | Submitted during oral-exam registration for potential discussion during the examination. | Create new de-identified educational reconstructions; SurgiTest does not submit or replace official cases. |
| Two-session oral exam | Assesses general transplant knowledge, organ-specific knowledge, and submitted-case reasoning. | Practice original simulations and personal-case defense without using recalled secure content. |
Published examination format
Know the current two-session architecture exactly
The most useful pacing practice reproduces the public structure without inventing a room-by-room blueprint that TACC has not published.
| Element | Published description | Preparation implication |
|---|---|---|
| Session 1 | 50 minutes with two examiners. | Sustain concise clinical reasoning, technical explanation, and follow-up answers without losing structure. |
| Break | A break separates the two sessions. | Reset deliberately; do not carry an uncertain answer or emotional reaction into the next examiner pair. |
| Session 2 | 50 minutes with a different examiner pair. | Demonstrate the same stable judgment across new questioning styles and topics. |
| Submitted cases | Three post-fellowship transplant cases submitted during registration. | Know the timeline, indications, alternatives, operation, complications, outcome, and lessons for each case. |
| General topics | May include procurement, infection, donor-derived disease, adherence, immunosuppression, and ethics. | Integrate these themes into organ-specific and personal-case answers rather than studying them as isolated lists. |
| Organ-specific topics | Kidney and/or liver according to Certificate of Completion and current practice. | Build deep organ fluency while maintaining general abdominal-transplant judgment. |
What may be examined
Organize preparation around the public subject areas
TACC’s examinee document identifies recipient selection and evaluation, donor selection and evaluation, intraoperative and technical topics, perioperative complications, and post-transplant management as possible organ-specific subject areas. General topics may include deceased-donor procurement, common infections, donor-derived disease risk, psychosocial and adherence issues, immunosuppression, and ethics.
These categories describe a continuum. A candidate discussing a kidney transplant should be prepared to move from sensitization and donor acceptance to implantation, delayed function, rejection, infection, adherence, and long-term cardiovascular or malignancy risk. A candidate discussing liver transplantation should be able to connect listing and organ acceptance to hepatectomy, reperfusion, vascular and biliary complications, immunologic injury, recurrence, and lifelong surveillance.
Recipient decision
Define indication, contraindications, competing mortality, psychosocial readiness, adherence risk, frailty, infection, malignancy, anatomy, and whether transplantation is the correct intervention now.
Donor and organ decision
Assess donor risk, organ quality, anatomy, preservation, infectious and malignant transmission risk, allocation constraints, anticipated ischemia, and the reason to accept, decline, or modify the plan.
Operative decision
Describe procurement or implantation through exposure, control, reconstruction, protection, reperfusion, completion assessment, and bailout.
Graft-dysfunction decision
Use timing, physiology, laboratory trajectory, imaging, pathology, microbiology, drug exposure, and technical context to distinguish surgical, immunologic, infectious, toxic, recurrent, and systemic causes.
Longitudinal decision
Balance immunosuppression, infection prevention, malignancy surveillance, organ-specific recurrence, cardiovascular and metabolic risk, adherence, quality of life, and transition of care.
Personal case defense
Prepare the three submitted cases as decision records—not polished stories
An examiner can enter at any point in the timeline. The candidate must therefore know the case as a network of defensible decisions rather than a memorized chronological monologue.
- 01
Reconstruct the clinical frame
Know the recipient indication, urgency, comorbidity, competing options, donor and graft characteristics, immunologic risk, anatomy, consent issues, and why the operation was reasonable at that time.
- 02
Build the decision ledger
For every major decision, write the available information, selected action, principal alternative, predicted risk, and finding that would have changed the plan.
- 03
Describe the operation from first principle
State positioning, exposure, control, preservation or back-table work, anastomotic order, reperfusion strategy, completion assessment, drains or stents, and immediate postoperative priorities.
- 04
Own complications without hindsight distortion
Explain recognition, differential, immediate stabilization, diagnostic choices, intervention, response, escalation, outcome, and what you learned or would change.
- 05
Prepare meaningful branches
Change donor quality, antibody risk, anatomy, hemodynamics, graft function, infection data, biopsy findings, or institutional capability and answer the current branch rather than defending the original one.
Accuracy over marketing
Keep the official kidney/liver boundary transparent while studying broadly
The current TACC oral-exam document explicitly describes organ-specific questioning in kidney and/or liver based on the candidate’s Certificate of Completion and current practice. It does not publish separate pancreas, intestinal, or multivisceral examination rooms or official weights.
SurgiTest nevertheless includes pancreas transplantation, intestinal and multivisceral transplantation, immunologic injury, donor and procurement pathology, and post-transplant systemic complications because these are important parts of abdominal transplant surgery and the user’s curriculum. Those sections are educational breadth domains, not claims about a separate official TACC blueprint.
| Layer | How it is represented |
|---|---|
| Official oral-exam statement | General transplant topics plus kidney and/or liver questions based on training and current practice, along with three submitted cases. |
| SurgiTest high-yield curriculum | Cross-organ judgment, immunology, donors, procurement, complications, ethics, and longitudinal management. |
| Extended organ curriculum | Kidney, liver, pancreas, intestinal, and multivisceral practice for comprehensive transplant-surgeon education. |
Scoring boundaries
Understand what TACC publishes—and what it does not
TACC states that each question is independently scored by the two examiners in the session. The Oral Exam Committee reviews the four examiners’ rubric results and compares performance with a threshold determined by TACC. Public materials do not provide a candidate-facing numerical cut score, domain weights, score-conversion formula, or list of automatic failures.
SurgiTest therefore reports educational dimensions such as clinical framing, selection judgment, immunology, technical clarity, complication rescue, longitudinal ownership, communication, ethics, and adaptability. Those signals can guide deliberate practice, but they are not an official TACC grade or certification probability.
Operational readiness
Prepare for a controlled online examination environment
- Use the current TACC registration communication for the exact date and assigned time; public information describes the exam as occurring in the fall after registration closes.
- Complete any required technology or scheduling steps promptly and test the exact computer, camera, microphone, browser, network, and room you will use.
- Have acceptable identification available and enter the Zoom waiting room according to current instructions.
- Use a private, quiet room without outside resources, additional electronics, recording devices, or interruptions.
- Expect proctor and examiner instructions to control the session; do not discuss examination content afterward.
- Request accommodations at least 90 days before the examination under the current public policy.
- Review cancellation, irregularity, appeal, remediation, and attempt-limit policies in the current examinee document.
Dates and policy can change
Verify current instructions before relying on any operational detail
TACC publicly states that the oral examination is offered in the fall and that specific dates are communicated after registration closes. This guide does not invent a 2026 or 2027 date that has not been published in the source material.
Before booking travel, changing clinical coverage, or finalizing a study calendar, verify the current TACC portal, registration email, examinee information, fee schedule, accommodation policy, cancellation deadline, and assigned session time. Treat direct TACC correspondence as controlling when it differs from a general educational page.
Put the framework under pressure
Rehearse the exact decisions in your own cases.
Voice-first cases, adaptive examiner follow-up, imaging, complications, and structured educational feedback for transplant surgery.
Questions candidates ask
Frequently asked questions
What is the current TACC oral examination format?
TACC’s current examinee information describes two online oral-examination sessions lasting 50 minutes each, with a break between sessions and two examiners in each session. The examination can include general transplant topics, kidney and/or liver questions based on the candidate’s Certificate of Completion and current practice, and discussion of three cases submitted during oral-exam registration.
Does TACC use personal cases?
Yes. Candidates submit three post-fellowship transplant cases when registering for the oral examination, and TACC encourages interesting or technically complicated cases. The three oral-exam cases are separate from the post-fellowship surgical log submitted during certification application. SurgiTest Personal Case Uploads are a private rehearsal workflow for newly written, fully de-identified educational summaries; they do not submit or replace either official TACC record.
Is TACC certification organ-specific?
TACC describes one Certified Abdominal Transplant Surgeon certification rather than separate organ-specific certificates. Current oral-exam information says organ-specific questioning is in kidney and/or liver according to the candidate’s training completion and current practice. SurgiTest also includes pancreas, intestine, and multivisceral domains for comprehensive transplant education, but does not represent them as separately weighted official TACC rooms.
How is the TACC oral examination scored?
TACC states that each question is independently scored by the two examiners in the session and that the Oral Exam Committee reviews the four examiners’ rubric results against a threshold determined by TACC. TACC does not publish a candidate-facing numeric cut-score formula for SurgiTest to reproduce, so SurgiTest feedback remains an educational readiness framework rather than an official score or certification prediction.
Source transparency
Official references
Board requirements, dates, and candidate instructions can change. Confirm current details directly with TACC and the Board’s candidate portal.
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