![]() ![]() "Whether the patient has light perception or no light perception is very important with respect to prognosis, especially if the globe turns out to be open," he notes. Recchia says this should be the first order of business in the examination. The surgeons list a number of key steps to take during your examination: Was it a high-velocity injury? Is there a possibility of penetration with a retained foreign body? Was there assault? Were drugs involved? In the case of a motor vehicle collision, what were the details? Once you've made a global or systemic assessment and taken a history of the circumstances surrounding the injury, your examination should begin." "Then, a history is helpful both for clinical management and for documentation in case of legal action down the road. "You want to make sure the patient doesn't have any other occult injuries that could be more life-threatening than the ocular injury," he explains. ![]() He notes that the first two actions to take when encountering a patient who has undergone ocular trauma are to make sure the patient is systemically stable and to get a history of the incident. Recchia, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and chief of the Retina Division at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute in Nashville, Tenn., has contributed to several books dealing with the management of ocular trauma. (Of course, every injury is unique, so any step-by-step guidelines must be adapted to the situation at hand.)įranco M. When a patient who has suffered ocular trauma is first seen, the initial objective must be to determine the nature and extent of the injury. ![]() Here, three surgeons with extensive experience discuss their approaches to managing these kinds of trauma. In general, the more serious types of ocular trauma-such as ruptured globes and corneal lacerations requiring surgical reconstruction-are less frequently seen by most ophthalmologists. (According to the United States Eye Injury Registry, 95 percent of ocular trauma injuries occur in males, most of whom are under 30 years of age sadly, most of these injuries are preventable.) An estimated 2.4 million eye injuries annually result in more than a billion dollars a year in total costs to society. Ocular trauma, although not an everyday encounter for many ophthalmologists, is a serious problem for our health system and economy. ![]()
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