@article{ref1,
title="Epidemiology of blinding trauma in the United States eye injury registry",
journal="Ophthalmic epidemiology",
year="2006",
author="Kuhn, F. and Morris, R. and Witherspoon, C. D. and Mann, LoRetta",
volume="13",
number="3",
pages="209-216",
abstract="Purpose: To analyze the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of serious eye injuries leading to legal blindness. Methods: Analysis of information on 11,320 eyes in the United States Eye Injury Registry (USEIR) database. Legal blindness in this study was defined as visual acuity of worse than 20/200. Results: No less than 27% of eyes with serious injury had < 20/200 final vision, although the rate varied greatly with injury type. Several risk factors were found to statistically significantly increase the chance of eye trauma resulting in blindness: age over 60 years, injury by assault, sustained on street/highway, or occurring during fall or by gunshot. Trauma to the left eye carried a statistically significantly poor prognosis as did two injury types, rupture and perforating. Involvement of the posterior segment was another factor indicating poor outcome; in particular, vitreous hemorrhage, retinal detachment, choroidal rupture, and endophthalmitis were found to increase the risk of blindness. Conversely, young age, contusion and intraocular foreign body injuries, among others, signaled a better than average chance of good outcome. Overall, 60.5% of injured eyes showed visual improvement after treatment. Conclusions: This large study identified multiple risk factors whose presence significantly increases the chance of the injured eye becoming &quot;legally blind.&quot; Continued efforts to improve treatment and develop/implement prevention measures based on risk analysis should reduce the incidence of blinding trauma.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0928-6586",
doi="10.1080/09286580600665886",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09286580600665886"
}