Appointments: (510) 836-2122
Appointments: (510) 836-2122
When was the last time you put on a pair of safety glasses? Just this week, I’ve treated three people with traumatic eye injuries. One young man was playing badminton and was hit by the shuttlecock (the “birdie”). Fortunately, he suffered only a corneal abrasion and had recovered two days later. Because of its small size, the shuttlecock can enter the bony orbit and directly impact the eye. Because of how fast it travels off the racquet, it can cause devastating tissue damage and even rupture the eye.
I helped a woman who had splashed liquid bleach in her eye while housecleaning. She had a first-class chemical burn to her cornea and conjunctiva, both of which can threaten vision. Hers will take longer to heal, but she was lucky, also—hers will heal without reconstructive surgery.
I treated a child who was brought in by his father after he’d fallen while carrying a pencil in his hand. You guessed it—pencil tip into the eye. He was especially lucky because the pencil tip broke off in the tough sclera before piercing the wall of his eye. He was a wonderfully trusting child, and I was able to remove the foreign body under eyedrop anesthesia right in the office. His vision will be fine.
What did these injuries have in common? All of them happened as a result of ocular exposure to everyday items. None of them wore eye protection. Two of them should have been--because their injuries could have been anticipated. (The child with the pencil gets a pass—he wasn’t running with it or using it unsafely. It was just an accident.)
So what’s the solution? We can all start by being careful and by anticipating which activities we do could possibly result in eye trauma. Sports that involve racquets and small, high velocity balls, activities involving sharp objects, chemicals and power tools, including lawn mowers and weed whackers—these are the main culprits. If you’re serious about preventing eye injuries, like I am, get in the habit of always using safety glasses with those activities. Insist your kids do the same. Ask about safety eyewear at an eyeglass shop or even at a home improvement store.
It’s easy to prevent a serious eye injury by thinking about it beforehand; from a surgeon’s perspective, it’s a lot harder to put an eye back together and restore lost vision.
We love our customers, so feel free to visit during normal business hours.
491 30th Street Suite 202 Oakland, CA 94609
Ph: (510) 835-8975 Fax: (510)835-8977
Open today | 09:00 am – 06:00 pm |
CLOSE FOR LUNCH AT 1:30PM TO 2:30 PM
Public Transportation
The MacArthur BART station, on Telegraph Avenue, is about 17 minutes' walk north of our office. A free medical area shuttle service, operated by Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, offers a complimentary ride from MacArthur BART station to 3100 Telegraph Ave every 20 minutes. Our office is just across the street from the shuttle stop. Please click here for shuttle information.
For informational purposes only, a link to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments web page is provided here. The federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires that detailed information about payment and other payments of value worth over ten dollars ($10) from manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologics to physicians and teaching hospitals be made available to the public.
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