How to Protect Your Child from Eye Injuries

How to Protect Your Child from Eye Injuries | Children’s Eye Health & Safety Month

8/30/2016

Protecting your child from eye injury is one of the most basic and important ways you can keep his or her eyes and vision healthy. Eye injures happen all too frequently. According to Prevent Blindness America, “Accidents involving common household products cause 125,000 eye injuries each year. Every 13 minutes, an emergency room treats a sports-related eye injury. And 43 percent of sports-related eye injuries are to children ages 14 and younger.” Unfortunately, eye injuries often come with serious consequences, including vision loss and blindness.

But there’s good news! An estimated 90 percent (90%) of all eye injuries are preventable. That’s why it’s so important that we talk about prevention and proper eye protection to keep your child’s eyes safe and vision healthy this Children’s Eye Health & Safety Awareness Month and beyond.

While eye injuries can happen anywhere and anytime – at home, at school, on the playground, in the car, outside, playing sports, games, or with toys, around fireworks, and so on.

Indoors and Around the Home Risks to Your Child’s Eye Health and Safety

Injuries can occur from a long list of situations, including:

Misusing toys
Misusing work and gardening tools around the house and garage
Misusing pens, pen, and eating utensils
Misusing makeup and cosmetics
Craft and school project accidents
Falls off or against furniture or other sharp, hard objects
Falls down stairs
Falls running with toys or other objects
Contact with common household products such as glass cleaner, bleach, glue, motor oil, fertilizer, paint, etc.
Flying debris from mowing the lawn, other yard work, or automobile work
Flying debris or debris in the air from wood work and other projects
Chemical spills and splashes
A hit to the eye from a ball, puck, rock, item around the home, or body part
Playing with explosives such as fireworks (including sparklers!) and projectiles like BB guns

The list of expected and unexpected dangers could go on and on. The point is not to create an exhaustive list, but to create awareness of the threats lurking for your child and his or her overall health and safety, including eye health and safety.

Having an understanding of lingering threats will enable you to find and remove or minimize hazards. It will also help you teach your child about dangers, safety, and precaution and watch to make sure he or she is playing with toys appropriately, doesn’t have access to items within the household that are not age appropriate, and is careful around stairs and furniture.

For more detailed tips and information on children’s eye safety, visit the following links:

Sports-Related Eye Injuries & Proper Eye Protection

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Tens of thousands of people sustain sports-related eye injuries each year. As we’ve already discussed, more than 40 percent (40%) of those are amongst children ages 14 and younger, and approximately 9 out of 10 of those injuries can be prevented with proper eye protection. So what is proper eye protection?

Proper eye protection includes safety goggles / glasses, eye guards, and face shields. The eye protection should be appropriate for the sport. Athletes who wear helmets for their sport, such as baseball, hockey, football and lacrosse players, should have an eye guard or face shield incorporated into the helmet. Athletes who do not wear helmets for their sport, such as basketball, soccer, field hockey, and outfield baseball players, should wear safety goggles / glasses.

Regardless of the type protective type of eyewear, it must include lenses made of polycarbonate material, which has a high impact resistance. While polycarbonate lenses are not shatterproof, they do shatter far less easily. Also, sports protective eyewear should be labeled ‘ASTM F803 approved’. Eyewear with that label is performance tested to ensure the highest levels of protection. Certain sports organizations, such as the U.S. Amateur Hockey Association, may have additional regulations and approvals for safety equipment for a particular sport. Further, sports eye guards should be padded and cushioned to prevent or minimize damage to the skin around the eyes should impact occur.

Please be aware that regular glasses, including prescription or over-the-counter eyeglasses and sunglasses, do not provide sufficient protection for sports. Their materials and designs will not hold up to impact, and they could cause further injury and more eye damage if they shatter.

It is important to speak with your child’s eye doctor and optician about getting the right safety goggles / glasses for your child and his or her particular sports activities. Prescription safety goggles and glasses are available, as are safety goggles and glasses that incorporate UV protection from the sun’s harmful rays. Having an idea of what your child needs before visiting the optical shop can help. Prevent Blindness America offers information on Sports Eye Safety and Recommended Sports Eye Protectors. AAO EyeSmart also offers information on Protective Eyewear, Eye Health in Sports and Recreation, and Sports Eye Injuries by the Numbers.

In addition to ensuring your child has the right sports eye protection, it’s important to make sure that your child likes his or her goggles or glasses, finds a good fit for his or her face, and feels comfortable wearing them. If the goggles or glasses end up sitting in a case or in the locker room or don’t fit properly, they will not be able to do their job of protecting your child’s eyes from injury.

What to Do and What Not to Do in the Case of an Eye Emergency

Of course, while we can take all of the precautions in the world, accidents happen. If your child does sustain an eye injury, it’s important to know what to do and what not to do.

Do the following, depending upon the severity of your child’s eye injury:

In the case of a true medical emergency, call 911.
If the case of a non-life threatening injury, call our office or call your child’s ophthalmologist immediately and get your child’s eye(s) examined right away. Our answering service is here to take your calls and contact our eye doctor on call in the case of emergencies. Getting your child seen without delay will improve the chance of saving his or her eye(s) and vision and minimizing long-term damage.
If possible, hold or tape a clean foam or paper cup (or something of that nature that won’t do further damage) over the child’s eye to prevent further contact with any item, including your child’s hands / fingers.

DO NOT do the following (or allow your child to do so) in case of an eye emergency:

DO NOT touch or rub the injured eye(s)
DO NOT rinse or attempt to clean the injured eye(s)
DO NOT apply pressure of any kind to the injured eye(s) – not with a hand, a clean towel, or anything
DO NOT apply ointment or other medication to the injured eye(s)
DO NOT stop for medicine, including over-the-counter pain relievers

We understand that should an eye injury occur, you and your child will be scared and in pain. Just remember, the best things you can do to protect your child’s eye(s) from further injury are to stay calm and try to keep your child as calm as possible, get your child immediate medical eye care, and allow the eye doctor to examine your child’s eye and administer the appropriate treatment for his or her injury. Not following these recommendations could lead to further eye damage and vision loss.

Preventing eye injury and knowing what to do if something happens can be the key to protecting and preserving your child’s vision. If you have any questions about eye injury prevention and / or sports eye safety, please do not hesitate to contact our office. And if an eye injury does occur, call our office immediately to get your child in to see one of our eye doctors.

This wraps up our coverage Children’s Eye Health & Safety Awareness Month 2016. We hope that your child has a wonderful, happy, healthy, and successful school year ahead!

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