Survey of eye injuries in Norwegian children.

A review of the medical records of 238 children younger than 16 years admitted with ocular injury to the University Hospital in Trondheim during a 10-years period was undertaken to provide information about the causes, circumstances and visual outcome of ocular trauma in young patients. Children with ocular injury represented 14% of all paediatric eye admissions. The majority were boys (77%). The frequency of injuries among boys increased markedly from the age of 8 years, while the frequency was almost the same among girls in all age groups. The most common cause of injury was projectiles (21.5%) followed by sticks, twigs and pencils (10.1%), falls (10.1%), bow and arrows and catapults (9.7%) and balls (8.8%). The most frequent diagnosis was contusion (43%). Perforating eye injuries amounted to 19%. Follow-up examination showed that 49% of children with eye injuries had some visual deficit, including eighteen children (8%) with visual acuity worse than 0.1. Because most of the eye injuries among children are preventable, more appropriate strategies for the prevention of these should be implemented.