Bottle-cork injury to the eye: a review of 13 cases.

PURPOSE: To analyze the anatomic and functional consequences of wine-cork injury to the eye in relation to the patient's age and the type of cork and wine.
METHODS: We retrospectively studied 13 patients, six women and seven men, presenting to our department with bottle-cork injury to the eye between January 1999 and June 2001.
RESULTS: All patients presented with closed-globe injury according to Kuhn et al's classification. All the cases were injured by bottle corks from sparkling wine: white in ten cases and red in three. Mean visual acuity at admission was 20/100 (range, hand motion to 20/20). The most frequent early injury was anterior chamber hyphema (84.6%), followed by corneal injury (62.2%), ocular hypertension (46.1%), lens subluxation (30.8%), traumatic cataract (23.1%), and post-traumatic retinal edema (23.1%). Mean final visual acuity was 20/25; the follow-up ranged from 3 to 29 months, averaging 16.1 months. Late complications were as follows: pupil motility anomalies (38.5%), traumatic cataract (30.8%), iridodialysis (15.4%), traumatic optic neuropathy (7.7%), post-traumatic glaucoma (7.7%), and traumatic maculopathy (15.4%). Surgical treatment was necessary in two cases (15.4%).
CONCLUSIONS: Bottle-cork eye injuries account for 10.8% of post-traumatic hospital admissions to our department. Most of them are due to sparkling white wine served at room temperature. There is no correlation between ocular injury and the eye-bottle distance or the type of cork.