One speciality, at national scale, since 1957
Across IndiaAssociate hospital network
236
Facilities in India and Africa (March 2025)
129
Indian cities, across 14 states and 4 union territories
3m
Patients treated a year (group brochure, 2026)
1957
Founded in Chennai
About the hospital
Why we refer here
An eye hospital and nothing else, which is the point. Dr Agarwals has done one speciality since 1957, and the volume that comes with 236 facilities is what a family travelling for a retina or a cornea case is actually buying.
Dr Agarwals began as a single hospital in Chennai in 1957 and now runs 236 facilities — 218 in India across 129 cities, and 18 across nine African countries — treating around 3 million patients a year, which is the figure the group publishes in its 2026 global patient brochure. Its audited accounts for the year to March 2025 put the figure at 2.43 million patients and over 282,000 surgeries, roughly 73 per cent of them cataract procedures. We cite both with their dates because the group's website currently claims three different facility counts on three different pages. The group also states that thirty-two of those 236 facilities hold NABH accreditation, which is the number that matters more than the total: it means the right question about any referral here is which unit the case goes to, and that is what we settle in writing before anyone travels. For a Bangladeshi family that question has a practical edge, because the group has units in Kolkata as well as the Chennai centre of excellence, and Kolkata is a great deal closer to home. Its 2026 global patient brochure, reproduced in full further down this page, names Chennai as the flagship and names the clinical head at its Salt Lake unit in Kolkata — which is the level of detail that makes a routing question answerable instead of a matter of trust. The same brochure records that the group has run its own optometry college since 2006, accredited by the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry. This is the first single-speciality hospital on this page — for an eye case it is the deeper choice, and for anything else it is the wrong one, which we will say plainly.
- 236 facilities across India and Africa, from a single Chennai hospital in 1957
- Thirty-two facilities NABH accredited — we confirm which unit your case goes to
- Cataract, cornea, retina, glaucoma, refractive and paediatric eye surgery
- Dedicated international patients team, with a single contact from visa to follow-up
Accreditation
- Thirty-two of 236 facilities accredited by NABH (annual report, FY2024-25)
- Dr. Agarwal's Health Care Limited listed on the NSE and BSE since February 2025
- Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital Limited listed on the BSE since 1995
Centres of excellence
What Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital treats
Comprehensive care across a wide range of specialities, delivered by expert teams under one roof.
Cataract surgery
Micro-incision and laser-assisted cataract surgery, with premium and multifocal lens implants.
Cornea & transplant
Corneal transplantation including PDEK, cross-linking and CAIRS for keratoconus.
Medical retina
Diabetic retinopathy and macular disease, managed medically including anti-VEGF injections.
Surgical retina
Retinal detachment, vitrectomy and surgery for advanced diabetic eye disease.
Glaucoma
Evaluation and management, including minimally invasive glaucoma surgery and trabeculectomy.
Refractive surgery
SMILE and Contoura LASIK and implantable collamer lenses to correct short and long sight.
Paediatric ophthalmology
Squint and nystagmus surgery, paediatric cataract and myopia management in children.
Laser & robotic-assisted surgery
Femtosecond laser and robotic platforms used for planned precision in cataract and refractive work.
Oculoplasty & general ophthalmology
Eyelid, orbit and tear-duct surgery, dry eye treatment and routine screening.
Neuro-ophthalmology
Vision loss arising from the optic nerve and the visual pathway rather than from the eye itself.
Emergency eye care
Ocular trauma, chemical injury and sudden vision loss, including orbital fracture repair through the eyelid.
Technology
The equipment behind the procedures
Worth reading if you have been quoted for robotic or radiation treatment — the platform used changes both the approach and the price.
Glued IOL
A technique the group states was developed at its own institution, for implanting a lens where the eye has no capsular support to hold one.
PDEK
Pre-Descemet's Endothelial Keratoplasty — a partial-thickness corneal transplant, also stated by the group as its own development.
CAIRS
Corneal Allogenic Intrastromal Ring Segments, used to reshape a cornea weakened by keratoconus using donor tissue rather than a synthetic implant.
Pinhole pupilloplasty
A narrowing of the pupil to sharpen vision in an eye whose cornea is too irregularly astigmatic for glasses or a lens to correct. The group publishes it as its own concept and as reversible.
Femtosecond & robotic platforms
Laser-assisted and robotic systems used in cataract and refractive surgery for planned, repeatable incisions.
SMILE and CLEAR lenticule extraction
Keyhole refractive surgery in which a lens-shaped piece of cornea is removed through a small incision rather than a flap being cut. The group names the Zeiss and Ziemer platforms for the two procedures.
Topography-guided excimer laser
An EX 500 excimer laser with Contoura treatment, which maps the individual cornea's surface and profiles the laser to it rather than to the spectacle prescription alone.
Minimally invasive glaucoma surgery
A Hydrus microstent placed to improve the eye's own drainage, offered as an alternative to a lifetime of pressure-lowering drops. Ask us which unit performs it before you travel.
Imaging, biometry and vitrectomy platforms
Pentacam HR corneal topography, IOLMaster 700 biometry for lens selection, anterior-segment and angiography OCT, wide-field retinal imaging, and a Constellation vitrectomy system for retinal surgery.
International patients
What the international patients team actually does
Dr Agarwals runs an international customer care team that assigns one named contact before the patient leaves home and keeps them to the flight back, and the published scope is unusually specific for an eye group. The thing to know before you read the list is where this group is not: it runs overseas patient coordination offices in Oman and Vietnam and none in Bangladesh, and neither of its 2026 documents carries a Bangladesh telephone number. That gap is the reason this company exists.
Visa and invitation letters
The invitation letter and the visa paperwork handled by the hospital's own team, alongside the passport documentation, as part of one named contact's job rather than a separate desk.
Airport transfer and arrival
Airport pick-up and drop, local transport through the stay, and appointments already booked before you land. A fit-to-fly and medicine certificate is issued for the journey home.
Language and interpreters
An interpreter is part of what the assigned contact arranges, and the group describes its global patient care team as multi-lingual without saying which languages. Its own enquiry form offers three, and Bangla is not among them — so this is a gap our coordinators fill, in person, for the whole stay.
EnglishFrenchPortugueseEstimates, currency and payment
Billing and money exchange are both named as part of the assigned contact's remit. Costs are quoted on enquiry rather than published, so the estimate comes to you in writing before anything is committed.
Insurance
The hospital publishes nothing here
Open, and oddly so. The group's international page has a section headed "Our Insurance Partners", but its own FAQ asks whether insurance is accepted for eye treatments and never answers it. We are not going to read a logo strip as a promise: assume you are paying directly, and if you hold a policy, tell us early and we will get an answer in writing.
Accommodation
Accommodation is arranged by the assigned contact before arrival, along with the flights and the appointment dates.
One named contact, start to finish
A single point of contact assigned before travel and kept for the whole journey, rather than a desk you queue at.
Fast-tracked, both ways
The group states a fast-track consultation with priority check-in, and priority in the surgical queue so a date is not left open while you wait abroad.
Oman and Vietnam, not Dhaka
The two overseas coordination offices the group lists are in Muscat and Vietnam. There is no Bangladesh office and no Bangladesh number in either document, so everything on this page reaches you through us.
Source: Dr Agarwals' international patients pages and its 2026 global patient brochure and leaflet, both reproduced further down this page — read it on the hospital's own site
Brochures
The group's global patient brochure
All sixteen pages of the Dr Agarwals Global Patient Corporate Brochure 2026, exactly as the group publishes it — the faculty by city, the technology, the network map and the group's own history. Click any page to read it full size. Read our note above on the cover figures before quoting them: we publish the audited annual-report numbers instead, and they are lower.
The procedure leaflet
Eight pages on the operations themselves — CAIRS, PDEK, Glued IOL, pinhole pupilloplasty, lenticule extraction, minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, squint surgery and retinal work — written for a patient rather than for a referrer. Worth reading if you have been offered one of these and want to know what it involves before you decide.
Also in the network
Manipal Hospitals
Multi-speciality tertiary care across a national network, with dedicated international patient desks.
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KIMS Hospitals Bengaluru
A multi-super-speciality campus built around robotic surgery, transplant and advanced critical care.
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Fortis Healthcare
Thirty-six facilities across twelve states, four of them JCI accredited, with a network-wide international patient desk.
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Apollo Hospitals Greams Road
The Apollo group's flagship in Chennai — over 60 departments on one campus, JCI accredited without a break since 2006.
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Apollo Proton Cancer Centre
Apollo's dedicated cancer hospital in Tharamani, Chennai — the first and only proton therapy centre in South Asia and the Middle East, with treatment support via Bangla Health Connect.
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Rela Hospital Chennai
A 450-bed quaternary hospital in Chennai with a liver and multi-organ transplant programme, and 130 of its beds in critical care.
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HCG Cancer Centres
India's largest cancer network — oncology and haematology only, across 25 hospitals, with bone marrow transplant and the group's own Bengali interpreters.
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Thinking about Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital?
Send us the diagnosis and the reports. We will come back with a specialist opinion and a written estimate from the hospital — and if another hospital suits the case better, we will tell you that instead.
We respond to every enquiry within 24 hours.