Holiday-Proof Your Vision: Tips to Avoid Common Eye Injuries

The holidays are a festive time of good food, fun parties — and eye injuries. Overzealous cooking, cleaning, or merrymaking leads to many avoidable accidents, and knowing what you’re facing is half of preventing their occurrence.

At Retina Specialists, our team of board-certified ophthalmologists has the experience and expertise to diagnose and treat all types of eye trauma, no matter what its cause. While you may not link the holidays with eye injuries, there are a number of preventable problems you should be aware of before you start with the decorating.

What is an eye injury?

The many different types of eye injuries include bruises, punctures, burns, and scratches. They can result from a scuffle or fight, exposure to hot food particles or cleaning chemicals, or a foreign object in your eye. An injury may be mild, or it can damage your eye, cause eye pain and/or vision loss, the latter of which may be temporary or permanent.

Common injuries around the holidays include:

Black eye

Maybe it was just a tussle, or maybe you made an exuberant gesture and your hand connected with someone’s face. The bruise that forms is known as a black eye, which refers to the tissues around the eye, not the eye itself. The area is likely to be swollen, but it’s usually not a serious injury.

We all get exuberant around the holidays, but being aware of your surroundings and practicing a little restraint can go a long way in preventing a black eye.

Blunt eye trauma

Blunt trauma is a more serious injury. A strong blow to your eye can fracture the bones around it (orbital fracture). A blowout fracture causes the muscles supporting your eye to be damaged or become trapped between bone fragments. If the force directly contacts your eyeball, it can dislocate, detach, or tear structures inside your eye. All of these are serious and need to be treated by a doctor.

It’s easy to get caught up in a game of hoops, football, or even wrestling, but if you haven’t exercised for a while, and if you’re using equipment you don’t know how to handle, you may be involved in an accident involving blunt eye trauma. It’s probably best that you sit the game out.

Eye burns

In our rush to clean the house before company arrives, we may not take the proper precautions with caustic cleaning products. When you’re using chemical cleaners, always wear eye protection to prevent chemical burns, which can run from mild to severe, depending on how much of the product you get in your eye.

Eye scratches

Eye scratches are known as corneal abrasions. They occur when something, such as a fingernail or another object scrapes against the clear dome on the surface of your eye. These scratches may cause pain, eye-watering, and light sensitivity.

Abrasions can happen at any time — rubbing your eye too vigorously, bringing wrapping paper too close to your eyes without realizing it, or horsing around with a friend or relative. As with avoiding a black eye, pay attention to what you’re doing at all times, so you don’t cause an avoidable accident.

Foreign bodies and penetrating injuries

A foreign body is anything that gets in your eye that shouldn’t be there. A penetrating injury is when a sharp object cuts into your eye. Good holiday examples are when one of the Christmas lights inadvertently explodes, sending glass particles flying, or when you’re trying out your new BB or paintball gun and hit someone with the ammo.

These types of injuries require professional attention, as they can cause bleeding and damage the structures inside the eye.

Do you have a holiday-related eye injury that needs immediate attention? Give Retina Specialists a call at any of our locations (Dallas, DeSoto, Plano, Mesquite, and Waxahachie) to schedule an urgent appointment.