Purpose:

To evaluate the epidemiological and clinical features and the follow-up results from patients under the age of fifteen with penetrating eye injuries.

Material and Method:

15-year-old or younger children who presented to the emergency room with penetrating eye injury between April 2007 and August 2008 were evaluated prospectively. All patients were assessed based on age, gender, injury time and how it happened, time of admission, time of operation, type of penetrating injury, initial and final visual acuity (VA) and concomitant eye pathologies.

Results:

Thirty eyes of 29 patients, 12 (41.38%) girls and 17 (58.62%) boys, with an average age of 6.83±4.00 (range 1-15) years were included in this study. Fourteen (48.28%) patients had an injury in the right eye, 14 (48.28%) had in the left eye, and one (3.44%) had bilateral injuries. Injuries were often a result of sharp objects such as knives, glass and scissors. The penetrating eye injury involved the cornea in 66.67% of cases (20 eyes), the corneosclera in 23.33% (7 eyes) and the sclera in 10.0% (3 eyes). VA with Snellen chart could be evaluated in 22 patients. Presenting VA was no light perception in two (9.09%) patients, light perception-projection/hand motion in 8 (36.36%) patients, counting fingers in 6 (27.27%) patients, between 0.1 and 0.5 in 4 (%18.18) patients, and 0.6 or better in 2 (9.09%) patients.

Discussion:

Although there was no statistically significant relationship between location of the laceration in the eye or classification of the laceration and final VA, the relationship between initial VA and final VA was found to be statistically significant (p<0.001). It was found that the final VA was high in patients with high initial VA.

Keywords: Penetrating eye injuries, ocular trauma score, childhood