The branch of medicine that deals with the research, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the eye is known as ophthalmology. An ophthalmologist is a specialist physician who has to be a medical doctor and a surgeon at the same time. Typical functions of an ophthalmologist include routine eye check-up, issuing prescriptions for eye glasses, treatment of eye-related infections such as conjunctivitis and surgical procedures such as cataract, cornea implants and so on. In India, there is a tremendous demand for trained ophthalmologists, since the patient to doctor ratio is really low. At the same time, there is a lot of scope for research into new avenues of ophthalmology such as ocular microbiology, ocular radiology and so on. Indian ophthalmology has really scaled up to match with international standards in recent years, with various technological advances being made in the field of laser ocular treatment. Hide this