Eye trauma is one of the causes of emergency room visits in this country. Both penetrating and blunt trauma to the eye may cause a hyphema, which is bleeding inside the globe of the eye. This results in varying degrees of vision loss that slowly improves as the blood is reabsorbed. It’s important to know that after an eye injury, permanent vision loss is more often related to more serious associated injuries such as a detached retina, and not just bleeding. Therefore, ophthalmologists need to periodically re-examine patients who have suffered eye injury.

Symptoms of Retinal Detachment

Symptoms include floaters and a curtain like appearance over a portion of the visual field. Unfortunately, these symptoms occur slowly and are often not recognized, especially by children, until a complication called a macula-off type retinal detachment develops. This complication is associated with amblyopia (lazy or crossed eye) and permanent vision loss.

Delayed Diagnosis

It is important to know that only 12% of retinal detachments occur immediately during or after trauma, and 50% of them occur within eight months.

Reasons retinal detachment is not diagnosed include not following up with an eye doctor, an incomplete eye exam due to blood floating around inside the eye, and a failure of the ophthalmologist to diagnose something called a retinal dialysis, which is a detachment of the retina at the very periphery of the eye on the border between the retina and the ciliary body. A retinal dialysis has to be treated to prevent retinal detachment.

Ophthalmologist are obligated to periodically re-examine patients who have suffered blunt eye trauma to rule out retinal dialysis, identify an early retinal detachment, and prevent the late complication of macula-off retinal detachment which can cause significant permanent vision loss.

In children, too often it’s a parent who discovers a lazy eye (amblyopia) which is the late complication of a macula-off retinal detachment. In a child with a long-standing macula-off retinal detachment the brain will over-time not recognize the signals from the injured eye. This results in permanent vision impairment or complete blindness.

Receiving monetary compensation from the help of an eye injury lawyer is the only help for an injured patient who suffers loss of vision due to the negligence of others. Factors to consider include the loss of peripheral vision that results from monocular vision (only being able to see out of one eye), medical follow up for both the good and the bad eye, protective eye wear for the good eye, job loss secondary to vision changes, anxiety and depression.

If you have suffered a retinal detachment or another serious eye injury contact Dr. Greg Vigna, M.D., J.D. for free advice and information about victim’s rights.