Complete Eye Care in One Place

Most eye problems do not announce which department they belong to. A patient arrives because their sight has changed, or because something hurts, and the job of the hospital is to find out why and deal with it.

That is why we put everything on one site. A patient seen in the medical clinic who turns out to need surgery does not go home and start again somewhere else; they are booked into our theatre. A cataract found at a village outreach is brought in for the operation. A child who cannot see the board is refracted, and their spectacles are made in our own workshop. What follows is how that care is organised.

You are registered at reception, where your file is opened if this is your first visit or retrieved if it is not. Your vision is then measured in each eye separately, and where it is relevant your current spectacle prescription is checked against it.

An ophthalmologist examines the front of the eye on the slit lamp, a microscope that gives a magnified view of the cornea, iris and lens, and measures the pressure inside the eye. Where the retina needs to be seen, drops are used to widen the pupil first.

From there the path depends on what has been found. It may be treatment and a review date, an investigation in our own unit, a laser appointment, a place on the surgical list, or a spectacle prescription to be made up in the optical workshop. All of it is arranged within the hospital.

One practical note. If your pupils are dilated your vision will be blurred and light will feel uncomfortable for several hours afterwards. Bring someone with you, and do not plan to drive yourself home.

Cataract is the leading cause of avoidable blindness in Nigeria, and cataract surgery is the operation that reverses it. We perform both phacoemulsification, which removes the lens through a very small incision using ultrasound, and small incision cataract surgery. Which suits you depends on the density of the cataract and the state of the eye, and your surgeon will explain the choice before you decide.

Beyond cataract we operate on glaucoma, on the retina, on the lids and orbit, and on ocular tumours. Children are operated on for congenital cataract and paediatric glaucoma, both urgent, because a child’s sight is still developing and the window for correcting it closes as they grow.

Every operation is preceded by measurement of the eye, and followed by drops and a series of review appointments. Using those drops exactly as instructed is the single biggest thing a patient contributes to their own result.

Accurate treatment depends on accurate measurement. Our investigation unit puts numbers and images to what the eye looks like, such as the thickness of the cornea, the shape of the drainage angle, the layers of the retina, and the exact length of the eye for a lens implant.

Those measurements also become your baseline. In a condition like glaucoma, it is the comparison between this year’s visual field and last year’s that tells us whether the disease is stable or advancing; a single test in isolation says far less.

The same unit runs our screening programmes: annual retinal screening for everyone living with diabetes, occupational screening for drivers and company staff, and a school programme covering primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Schools, workplaces, churches and community groups can arrange a screening by contacting the hospital.

A great deal of poor sight in our region needs nothing more complicated than the right pair of glasses. Uncorrected refractive error is the commonest cause of poor vision in the world, and one of the most easily missed reasons a child falls behind at school.

We refract in the clinic and dispense in our own optical workshop, so lenses are cut and fitted on site. In children and young adults, we use drops that relax the focusing muscle, because without them the eye can hide a long-sighted prescription and give a false result.

Where sight cannot be fully corrected, the low vision clinic takes over. It does not treat the eye disease; it addresses what the person can no longer do, such as reading, recognising faces, moving about safely, managing at school or at work, using magnifiers, telescopic aids, lighting, contrast and training in how to use the remaining vision.

Adults come to us with cataract, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, corneal and retinal conditions, and for routine examination of eyes that are simply getting older.

Children are seen for refractive error, lazy eye, squint, congenital cataract and eye injury. We give paediatric care its own emphasis because in childhood the timing of treatment decides the outcome: sight develops during the early years, and a problem left uncorrected through that window may not be recoverable later, even when the underlying condition is finally treated.

People living with diabetes need a dilated retinal examination every year whether or not their sight has changed, because diabetic retinopathy causes no symptoms until it is advanced. Drivers and company staff come to us for occupational and fitness-to-drive screening, and schools across primary, secondary and tertiary levels for screening programmes.

And for the communities that cannot reach a hospital at all, we go out to them. Our eye camps take screening and treatment into rural areas, and patients found to need surgery are brought in for it.

Some things should not wait. Come the same day if you have sudden loss of vision in one eye, a sudden shower of floaters or flashing lights, a curtain or shadow moving across your sight, a painful red eye that is sensitive to light, or any injury to the eye.

For a chemical splash, wash the eye with clean running water for at least fifteen to twenty minutes before you travel, then come immediately. For a child, a white or grey reflection in the pupil needs urgent examination.

Our emergency line is (+234) 706 313 0156.

• General clinic – Monday to Friday, 7 am to 5 pm
• Surgery – Tuesdays and Thursdays
• Low vision clinic – every Friday
• Community outreach – selected Saturdays
• School eye health programme – as scheduled
• Emergency line – (+234) 706 313 0156, at any hour