Eye Care
Southampton’s eye unit is the leading provider of eye care services on the south coast.
As one of Southampton General Hospital’s largest departments, the unit deals with around 90,000 patients annually through its eye emergencies, outpatients and inpatients and surgery departments.
The optometry department provides aids for the treatment of low vision conditions as well as contact lens fitting, and works alongside the orthoptics department to assess and treat a range of problems with eye movement and vision.
We have a specialist children’s eye service including family support and we operate a mobile eye unit to enable patients with certain eye conditions to be treated closer to home.
The eye unit is proud to have state-of-the-art equipment and facilities and is constantly developing new treatments for blindness.


Its strong links with the University of Southampton ensure that research into the causes and treatments for the most serious cases of previously untreatable blindness can be found.
As well as being the region’s leading provider of eye care, the unit is also a major player in the research into and teaching of eye care.
Our services
We diagnose and treat a wide range of eye conditions through our eye emergencies service and other departments.
- Cataracts including cataract surgery
- Retinal conditions including retinal detachment, vitrectomy and diabetic retinopathy
- Macular conditions including a hole in the macula and macular degeneration
- Glaucoma, both chronic and acute
- Eyelid, tear drainage and orbit conditions including blocked tear ducts, entropion and ectropion
- Oculoplastics, which are operations involving the eye lids or eye ball
- Corneal conditions and surgery including conditions such as pterigium, keratoconus and distored cornea, and corneal grafts
- Eye movement disorders such as amblyopia (lazy eye), squint, defective binocular vision and double vision
- Prosthetic eyes and whole eye disorders
- Lens conditions and treatments including aphakia, high myopia, hypermetropia, uveitis and the provision of cosmetic lenses
How Charity support has impacted the hospital
- We funded research into amblyopia (lazy eye) conditions with children. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, almost 5,000 “routine” appointments have been cancelled in Southampton alone. Thanks to your donations, we have been able to fund new research to allow our Southampton Children’s Hospital clinicians to monitor children’s sight at home. The Children’s Eye Examination and Testing At Home (CHEETAH) study would initially benefit 300 children over the course of the three year study across Hampshire and potentially have a global impact.
- We purchased a handheld RETeval ERG system, a device that measures what the brain and eye can see. Instead of patients waiting to be seen in the lab to have brain waves monitored, the Eye Unit team can now run tests in the Unit or even in the wards.