Eye injuries more frequent, but less severe

[unhappycamper]

Eye injuries more frequent, but less severe
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Feb 19, 2009 19:32:11 EST

Eye protection can make a person miserable: Sweat drips from behind the rubber seal; it’s hard to see out the sides; they can fog up.

But new statistics show that a little bit of annoyance is paying off. The very same goggles that are designed to cause black eyes by pushing the brunt of a hit to the bones around the eyes, rather than the eyes themselves, have cut the rate of traumatic eye injuries — the ones termed “high risk of blindness” — in half, from 0.4 per 1,000 people in 2004 to 0.2 in 2007, according to data from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

That’s important, considering that in raw numbers, eye injuries caused by war, guns and explosives increased from 16 in 2002 to 225 in 2007.

“During combat operations, the number, nature and intensity of eye injury hazards has significantly increased,” wrote Army Maj. Mark Reynolds and Stephen Taubman, authors of the report. “Orbital and contusion injuries result from blunt force to the face and skull structures surrounding the eye, while ‘high risk of blindness’ ... results from sharp trauma directly to the eye.”

Fortunately, as service members field-tested the new ballistic goggles, the military made improvements. Now they rarely fog up and can be as wearable as a pair of sunglasses.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/02/military_eyeinjuries_021909w/%2e