Eye Injury

Abstract

In spite of its being such a small organ, injuries of the eye comprise up to 10% of all injuries requiring hospitalization in modern wars, because the eye is exceedingly vulnerable. A metal fragment a fraction of a millimeter in size, which will hardly be noticed anywhere else, causes a severe injury in the eye. Such trauma always requires hospitalization and frequently hazardous surgery, will occasionally lead to the loss of the injured eye and on very rare occasions the loss of the other eye as well through sympathetic ophthalmia. This specific sensitivity of the eye to mechanical injury and other forms of physical trauma is hardly surprising when one considers that this small ball, 2.4 cm in diameter, contains many delicate tissues each vital to vision.