Eye injuries: prepare and prevent, not repair and repent

RECENTLY I attended the Asia-Pacific Ocular Trauma Conference held in Chennai, India as a delegate and invited speaker. It was a meeting for eye doctors to discuss management of eye injuries, a relevant one in my line of work.

After close to 20 years in practice as an ophthalmologist - for an initial few years in England and then in Singapore - I reckon I have seen my fair share of eye injury cases, from the young child whose cornea was perforated by a sharp pencil tip at school and the SEA Games basket-ball player elbowed in the eye, to the Lunar New Year reveller rushed in from Johor, whose whole eye (and brain) were hit by fireworks and the cleaner of a posh hotel whose eye was cut by a yucca plant; there was also the elderly man who fractured his eye socket from a fall at home due to poor sight from a dense cataract, the young driver in a car accident with resultant airbag injury to the eye, the bar man punched in the eye by a drunk patron, and work site employees whose eyes were hurt by flying metal flecks or chemical spills.

The list is very long, and the severity and outcome of treatment, as varied as the presentation.