A rare mode of golf related eye injury: Freak accidents do occur!

Prevent, curtail and mitigate ocular injuries: Proposal for designing an eye injury registry model for the Indian Armed Forces

This article aims to propose a design for Eye Injury Registry (EIR) model for Indian Armed Forces, to make ophthalmologists and non-ophthalmologists aware about the existence as well as the usefulness of such a registry. This is a perspective study. The EIR model for Armed Forces was designed based on the relevant sources in PubMed, Scopus and Embase including registries of pioneering countries like United States and Canada. A questionnaire based on the model dimensions was developed (Cronbach's alpha>0.7) and filled by 04 senior ophthalmologists in Armed Forces, all of who had a significant experience in dealing with various types of ocular trauma, to give expert opinions, which were then applied to the proposed model to finalize it. In Armed Forces, a registry and reporting on eye injury along with a systematic collection of standard data on eye injuries will help ophthalmologists in the successful prevention. Such a registry and its large database once formed will permit elaborate epidemiologic investigations, highlighting preventable sources of injury, emerging patterns of trauma in our services, and the best possible treatment protocols to be adopted, for successful outcomes. EIR in Armed Forces can help in the collection of eye injury data, thereby improving the quality-of-care and expansion of prevention strategies for ocular injuries. It is a step to make a truly effective data bank, which will be instrumental in combating such preventable ocular injuries and in turn go a very long way in achieving the final goal of preventing up to 90% of such injuries.

COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF GOLF-RELATED OCULAR INJURIES

PURPOSE

The authors aimed to analyze the causes and outcomes of golf-related ocular injuries in this retrospective meta-analysis, literature review, and original case series.

METHODS

Forty-one articles identified by PubMed search resulted in 11 included studies yielding 102 subjects. Included articles described all ocular golf injuries that presented to an institution during a determined period. Eight factors were analyzed: age, sex, location and mechanism of injury, protective eyewear use, resulting open-globe injury, resulting enucleation, and visual acuity changes.

RESULTS

No subjects wore adequate protective eyewear. Significantly more subjects were injured by golf balls (72%) than golf clubs (27%) or foreign body (1%) (P < 0.0001). The ratio of golf ball to club injuries was significantly higher in adults (92%) than in children (23%) (P < 0.0001). Forty-seven of 93 (51%) injuries resulted in an open globe, whereas 27/82 (33%) injuries resulted in enucleation. The mean ± SD logMAR visual acuity improved by -0.641 ± 0.745 after treatment (>6 lines of improvement; P = 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

Reported ocular golf injuries occur less frequently than other ocular sports injuries, but may result in devastating outcomes. Supervision of children using golf equipment should be encouraged.