In wartime, ophthalmologists note an increase in the number of both military and domestic eye injuries of children, said Svetlana Tronina, Senior Researcher at the Department of Pediatric Ophthalmopathology of the V.P. Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine .
“Today, we and our colleagues in Ukraine see an increase in the incidence of injuries in children, both related directly to military circumstances, for example, with shell explosions, and an increase in the number of domestic injuries,” she told Interfax-Ukraine.
The expert noted that military eye injuries in children occur in regions close to the combat zone.
“These are mainly mine-explosive injuries, some kind of shrapnel wounds associated with ammunition explosions. Most often, this is a combination of severe injuries not only to the eyes, but also to the face and other organs,” she said, summarizing the experience of pediatric ophthalmologists in Ukraine .
At the same time, Tronina drew attention to the fact that in wartime, the number of domestic eye injuries in children increases, which the expert associates, among other things, with migration, loss of housing, deterioration of living conditions and other circumstances caused by military operations.
“Many families are forced to move with their children, they are not always in comfortable conditions. Parents are forced to deal with issues of accommodation, employment, and children are left to their own devices more than in peacetime. Access to dangerous items is greater than usual.
According to her, children’s games at this time are more aggressive, often associated “with some kind of darts, bows.”
“We see general nervousness and a desire to play some kind of aggressive games, children have more access to dangerous things. Even girls get injured with sharp objects, which usually rarely happens to them. We note an increase in the frequency of eye injuries in children,” Tronina said. .
According to her, since the beginning of the war, children with both military and domestic injuries have been admitted to the Filatov Institute. In particular, a nine-year-old child was admitted to the department, who, as a result of a wall falling from an explosion, was injured in the right temporal region of the head, face, right eye – a severe contusion of the eyeball.
Among domestic injuries with which children were admitted to the clinic, the expert named injuries due to parental oversight. As an example, she cited a case where a 16-year-old patient was injured in his right eye by a nail while playing with his younger brother, who tied the nail to the end of an arrow. More cases: a teenager was injured in his left eye by a metal fragment, hammering a metal stake with a hammer; a three-year-old patient stuck a coin cell battery under his lower eyelid and received an extensive alkaline chemical burn to his eye; a six-year-old patient sustained an explosive eye injury while playing with another child who fired a firearm.
In the list of examples of such injuries – a 16-year-old teenager was chopping wood and a wooden rolling pin bounced into his eye; A 7-year-old boy shot himself in the eye with a compressed air pistol while playing at the service station, an 8-year-old patient injured his eye with a nail …
At the same time, Tronina recalled that the children’s department of the Institute. V.P. Filatova has a wide range of methods for the treatment and rehabilitation of childhood eye injuries. In particular, the institute has a lot of its own research developments on this topic, including those devoted to the improvement of surgical techniques, treatment and rehabilitation tactics.
“Children are not a reduced copy of adults. They have different methods of performing operations, a greater amount of postoperative treatment, so it is not enough just to carry out the operation at a high technological level, you still need to properly conduct the postoperative period,” she stressed.
