Original articleDemographic and Clinical Profile of Ocular Chemical Injuries in the Pediatric Age Group
Section snippets
Methods
In this retrospective chart review, case records of pediatric patients who were treated at a tertiary eye care hospital between March 2006 and March 2011 with ocular chemical burns were analyzed. The study was approved by an institutional review board and adhered to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Modified Roper-Hall classification was used for grading of ocular burns.1 The management of patients depended on the severity of ocular injury at the time of presentation. In the acute
Results
A total of 134 patients (85 [63.4%] were male) with ocular chemical injury were seen between March 2006 and March 2011. The mean age at the time of injury was 8.95±4.89 years (range, 1.2–15.5 years), with approximately half (n = 69, 51.4%) of the patients in the 0- to 5-year-old age group (Table 1). The highest male-to-female ratio was seen in the 6- to 10-year-old age group with a ratio of 3.2:1, whereas the youngest age group (0–5 years) showed a relatively lower male-to-female ratio of
Discussion
Chemical ocular burns are potentially blinding because extensive limbal ischemia impairs ocular surface healing, eventually causing corneal opacification, which is difficult to treat with conventional corneal transplantation techniques.13 Although alkalis cause more severe chemical injuries compared with acids,14, 15, 16 acidic agents such as hydrofluoric acid are known to produce severe injuries because of rapid penetration into the eye.17 Management of severe ocular chemical injuries
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2021, Ocular SurfaceCitation Excerpt :Current literature describes the epidemiology of OSCI in the context of ocular trauma [11–33], chemical injuries to all body areas [34–41], calls to poisons control centers about ocular exposures [42–44] and hospital admissions [10,45,46], general [47–50] or eye emergency department attendances due to OSCI [51–68]. This is also divided by occupational ocular injuries [69–83] or by age [84–96]. Young adult males are still most at risk of OSCI, however, other groups may be more at risk than previously thought, such as children under 5 years old [45,48].
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Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.