Fireworks in amateur hands can cause severe ocular trauma
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Fireworks are responsible for more than 9,000 injuries every year, and most of those injuries happen in the early summer months, according to Anna P. Murchison, MD, MPH, director, Wills Eye Emergency Department at Jefferson.
This year has seen an uptick in the overall number of eye injuries as well as the severity of those injuries, Murchison told Healio/OSN.
“As this year has already had more reports of non-professionals using fireworks in more populated urban areas, there is the potential for more injuries over a longer than usual time frame,” she said.
Between 1999 and 2017, almost 2,000 ocular injuries in the U.S. were firework-related annually, Shiuey and colleagues found in a study of national epidemiologic data. Ocular burns were the most frequent injury, and bottle rockets were about seven times as likely to cause severe eye trauma compared with other types of fireworks.
Younger white males (mean age, 17.3 years) were affected most often, and ocular burns were most common, accounting for about 62.9% of ocular injuries, followed by ocular foreign bodies (11.7%) and conjunctival irritation (9.6%).
Over the July 4 weekend, Wills Eye Hospital managed several severe eye injuries, including one case requiring urgent surgery, Murchison said.
“This year, more than ever, we need to be leaving fireworks to the professionals,” Murchison said. “This will help protect ourselves and others in our community from potentially devastating injuries.”
Reference:
- Shiuey EJ, et al. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2020;doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.0832.
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