Facilities at the Cosmetic & Ophthalmic
    Surgery Centre

At the Cosmetic & Ophthalmic Surgery Centre, there is excellent provision of space, time and equipment to allow our consultants to examine you and provide any necessary treatment. Many factors influence the ease with which squint assessment is achieved at the Cosmetic & Ophthalmic Surgery Centre. These include our highly experienced eye surgeons, who are uniquely skilled in diagnostic techniques, clinical interpretation and therapeutic modalities. Together with our comfortable surroundings, the minimal delay in seeing our ophthalmologists and a friendly, professional approach by staff to all our patients, makes COS the ideal setting for safe surgery. We would recommend that you contact us for further details about our surgeons and the procedures performed here.

Squint surgery encompasses neuro-ophthalmology and adult eye muscle disorders, with an emphasis on binocular vision and eye movements. By choosing various test procedures, our ophthalmologists can formulate impressions including a differential diagnosis and possible modes of non-surgical treatment. All the options and outcomes are fully discussed with you.

Squint Surgery

Definition of Squint

A “squint” is the common name for ‘strabismus’ or ‘heterotropia’ which is the medical term used to describe eyes that are not pointing in the same direction, or which are misaligned. Squints are also sometimes called 'lazy eye', to refer to a turned eye, but this is not an accurate description. Squints can be classified according to the direction of the turn of the eye: esotropia (convergent) refers to an eye that turns inwards towards the nose; exotropia (divergent) refers to an eye that points outwards; hypertropia is when eye is upwards. Binocular vision occurs when both eyes are looking towards the same direction, to produce a single, combined image at the brain.

Classification

The classification of squint may be based on a number of features including the relative position of the eyes, whether the deviation is latent or manifest, intermittent or constant, concomitant or otherwise and according to the age of onset (congenital –at birth, or acquired- later in life) and the relevance of any associated refractive error. The type of strabismus is established by a detailed history and examination.

The squint may be present all or only part of the time, in only one eye or alternating between the two eyes. A squint can occur for a number of reasons: these separately or together cause squint.

• Refractive (focusing) abnormality
• Eye muscle imbalance
• It can run in families
• Illness - can make it obvious
• Fatigue, stress or extended work load
• Injury
• Rarely, it can be due to other diseases or illness.