Prevalence of Sports‑Related Eye Injuries: A Systematic Review and Meta‑Analysis

More than 42,000 sports‑related eye injuries are brought to emergency units every year. Although multiple studies have been conducted on the prevalence of sports‑related eye injuries and consequent outcomes, no systematic review has been conducted to summarize the findings of these studies. Therefore, this study was conducted to systematically review the prevalence of sports‑related eye injuries and blindness.

A systematic search was conducted to locate the studies that addressed the global prevalence of sports‑related eye injuries. The located articles(132 studies) were screened on different levels, and their quality was assessed using the JBI checklist for prevalence studies. The statistical analysis was conducted using CMA v. 3.2, and the results were considered significant for P < 0.05.

From a total of 132 studies, 27 articles were included for analyzing the prevalence of sports‑related blindness which was 7.2%. Further, 51 studies were used for analyzing the prevalence of sports‑related eye injuries in total eye injuries, and the obtained value was 9.3%. Moreover, 29 studies were analyzed to calculate the proportion of sports‑related eye injuries to total sports injuries, and the obtained value was 6.7%.

Findings of this study suggest that sport‑related eye injuries account for a major part of eye injuries and a considerable portion of these traumas lead to blindness.