Oculoplastic Surgery

Physical or chemical injuries of the eye can be a serious threat to vision if not treated appropriately and in a timely fashion. The most obvious presentation of ocular (eye) injuries is redness and pain of the affected eyes.

Effects of Eye injury :

Flicking sand, flying pieces of wood, metal, glass, stone and other material are notorious for causing much of the eye trauma. Sporting balls such as cricket ball, lawn tennis ball, squash ball), shuttle cock (from Badminton) and other high speed flying objects can strike the eye. The eye is also succeptible to blunt trauma in a fistfight. The games of young children such as bow-and-arrows, bb guns and firecrackers can lead to eye trauma. Road traffic accidents (RTAs) with head and facial trauma may also have an eye injury - these are usually severe in nature with multiple lacerations, shards of glasses embedded in tissues, orbital fractures, severe hematoma and penetrating open-globe injuries with prolapse of eye contents. Other causes of intraocular trauma may arise from workplace tools or even common household implements.

Causes:

• Closed globe injury or Non-penetrating trauma: The eye globe is intact, but the seven rings of the eye have been classically described as affected by blunt trauma.
• Penetrating trauma: The globe integrity is disrupted by a full-thickness entry wound and may be associated with prolapse of the internal contents of the eye.
• Perforating trauma: The globe integrity is disrupted in two places due to an entrance and exit wound (through and through injury). This is a quite severe type of eye injury.
• Blowout fracture of the orbit is caused by blunt trauma, classically described for fist or ball injury, leading to fracture of the floor or medial wall of the orbit due to sudden increased pressure on the orbital contents.

Management

Irrigation
The first line of management for chemical injuries is usually copious irrigation of the eye with an isotonic saline or sterile water. In the cases of chemical burns, one should not try to buffer the solution, but instead dilute it with copious flushing.

Patching

Depending on the type of ocular injury, either a pressure patch or shield patch should be applied. In most cases, such as those of corneal abrasion or the like, a pressure patch should be applied that ensures some tension is applied to the eye, and that the patient cannot open his or her eye under the patch. In cases of globe penetration, pressure patches should never be applied, and instead a shield patch should be applied that protects the eye without applying any pressure. If a shield patch is applied to one eye, the other eye should be also be patched due to eye movement. If the uninjured eye moves, the injured eye will also move involuntarily possibly causing more damage.

Suturing

In cases of eyelid laceration, sutures may be a part of appropriate management by the primary care physician so long as the laceration does not threaten the canaliculi, is not deep, and does not affect the lid margins.