Acts Which Could Potentially Cause Vision Loss

The Holidays are almost here, few days to Christmas, many organizations are starting off their Christmas break by this week's end and I know the majority of us can't wait to spend time with our families and loved ones.

Unfortunately, it looks like most often, during Holidays and festivities like this one, accident rates tend to increase and people put themselves in hazardous situations by celebrating and being less cautious than they usually would be.

And so while I am not here to talk about hazards regarding holidays and festivities and why or how we ought to play it safe, I would use the opportunity to point out one or two things that a lot of individuals are fond of doing or tend to do which could be sight-threatening.

And do not get me wrong, when I say sight-threatening, I mean the possibility of losing one's vision for good, or with lots of difficulties if it could be returned in some extreme perhaps surgical situations or sheer luck. So what are some of these simple acts that put our sight in danger?

• Trauma and Over-the-Counter Medication

I know I tend to speak a lot about people just going over to the pharmacy to buy drugs when they ain't well and the need to stop them, but when it comes to the eye, especially in cases where there is some form of accident or trauma to the eye, buying over the counter drugs, if you ain't lucky you could cause permanent damage to your eyes.

How so? When the eye is bruised or ulcerated as is very common in cases of trauma or accident, the use of drugs involving steroid solutions for treatment affects the normal healing process of the cornea thus affecting its transparency or integrity. Scar tissues when formed would make the cornea opaque and prevent light from getting into the eye for vision to be processed.

In the end, you have functioning eyes and yet would not be able to see because light can't get into the eye. I have seen some of these happen in my line of work and it is always a sad situation when they find out their negligence has cost them lives, when a simple visit to the Optometrist could have easily spotted the peeling of the epithelial layer of the cornea warranting appropriate treatment and safe recovery.

So please and please again, if you find yourself in a situation where you hurt your eyes, either by accident or while playing or a friend hits you because you did something bad to them, whatever it may be, if it has to do with the eye, your first line of consult should be to the Optometrist right away.

• Do not wait out on the eye

What do I mean by do not wait out on the eye? When your eyes feel anything but the normal you, do not say it will pass let me just wait. Perhaps you suddenly started feeling pain in your eyes, do not say, "Oh this just happened this morning I'm it will go on its own soon". That is unsafe and has a lot of potential to cause permanent damage in some cases.

Unfortunately, I just experienced a similar situation with a patient of mine just last week which I even shared on my blog, she experienced pain and decided to wait it out while her Dad got her some over-the-counter drugs to use in the meantime and when she came, her vision has become so bad she could only tell the fingers I was holding up from a meter away and had retinal detachment from her scans. Unfortunately, this could have been prevented or salvaged earlier to give her a better prognosis. So you see what I mean?

Further Reading

_{Itoi M. [Corneal ulcer]. Nihon Ishikai Zasshi. 1971 Dec;66(11):1143-8. Japanese. PMID: 5168533.}

_{Tsirouki T, Dastiridou A, Symeonidis C, Tounakaki O, Brazitikou I, Kalogeropoulos C, Androudi S. A Focus on the Epidemiology of Uveitis. Ocul Immunol Inflamm. 2018;26(1):2-16. doi: 10.1080/09273948.2016.1196713. Epub 2016 Jul 28. PMID: 27467180.}

_{Agarwal M, Dutta Majumder P, Babu K, Konana VK, Goyal M, Touhami S, Stanescu-Segall D, Bodaghi B. Drug-induced uveitis: A review. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2020 Sep;68(9):1799-1807. doi: 10.4103/ijo.IJO_816_20. PMID: 32823396; PMCID: PMC7690475.}