Home Eye Trauma in Emergency Units

Eye trauma is a major problem in emergency rooms that could be prevented in the world. Over 0.5 milion individuals lose their vision due to eye trauma. Eye trauma is a major cause of monocular blindness. After occupational trauma, eye trauma at home, is a second cause (15-41%) of blunt trauma. Therefore in this study, we investigated home eye trauma in the emergency unit of Alavi Eye Center, in Tabriz. The design was a retrospective study from March, 2003 to December, 2003 to investigate 305 patients with eye trauma that occurred at home and refered to the emergency unit of Alavi Hospital. In this study, SPSS used for data analysis. About 53.8% of the patients participated in this study were males and 46.2% were females. Mean age of the patients was 26.3 years. Most of the cases were children under 10 years old (with 7.9% females and 15.4% males). There was a significant relationship between eye trauma at home and age. Corneal abrasion was the most common type of trauma (32.7%), and blunt trauma was the most common cause of the eye trauma (20.7%) that were similar results with the other studies. With regard to the prevalence of home eye trauma at younger age, the investigators concluded that education of mothers is a key measure. In fact nurses play an important role to previde the information regarding eye trauma prevention.