Matsa E, et al. - Authors characterized the pediatric acute ocular injury in the United States using data from a stratified, national sample of Emergency Department (ED) visits. As per the data, pediatric acute ocular injuries demonstrated a decline in the United States between 2006 and 2014. Nonetheless, a prevalence of pediatric acute ocular injuries is still noted, and future prevention strategies could be established by understanding these trends.

Methods

• Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study.
• Care to the study participants was provided at EDs included in the 2006 to 2014 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, comprising 376,040 children aged 0 to 17 years with acute traumatic ocular injuries.
• They analyzed the data from June 2016 to March 2018.
• Identification of children with acute ocular injuries was done by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modificationdiagnosis codes and external-cause-of-injury codes.
• Authors collected the demographic and clinical characteristics of children with acute traumatic ocular injuries and temporal trends in the incidence of ocular injuries by age, risk of vision loss, and mechanism of injury were explored.

Results

• As per findings, for pediatric acute ocular injury in 2014, there were an estimated 163,431 (95% CI, 151,235-175,627) ED visits.
• Data suggested that more often the injured children were male (63.0%; 95% CI, 62.5-63.5) and in the youngest age category (birth to 4 years, 35.3%; 95% CI, 34.4-36.2; vs 10-14 years, 20.6%; 95% CI, 20.1-21.1).
• Results demonstrated that injuries commonly resulted from a strike to the eye (22.5%; 95% CI, 21.3-23.8) and affected the adnexa (43.7%; 95% CI, 42.7-44.8).
• A low risk for vision loss was seen in most injuries (84.2%; 95% CI, 83.5-85.0), with only 1.3% (95% CI, 1.1-1.5) of injuries being high risk.
• Experts noted a decrease in the pediatric acute ocular injuries by 26.1% between 2006 and 2014 (95% CI, -27.0 to -25.0).
• They noted that this decline existed across all patient demographic characteristics, injury patterns, and vision loss categories and for most mechanisms of injury.
• Increases were noted during the study in injuries related to sports (12.8%; 95% CI, 5.4-20.2) and household/domestic activities (20.7%; 95% CI, 16.2-25.2).
• Motor vehicle crashes (-79.8%; 95% CI, -85.8 to -74.9) and guns (-68.5%; 95% CI, -73.5 to -63.6) caused the greatest decrease in high-risk injuries.