Emergency Care for Severe Eye Injuries

Emergency care to take if your eyeball has a foreign object protruding from the eyeball, gets dislodged or pops out due to a traumatic injury.

I've been a nurse for many years and I've seen many types of eye injuries, however most eye injuries involve cuts or chemical exposures and therefore can be flushed with water and covered appropriately with a well moistened clean bandage while seeking an emergency care facility.

In some cases however more severe eye injuries can occur such as some kind of foreign object protruding from the eyeball or a dislodged, popped out eyeball, in which case there are several immediate emergency care steps that need to be taken while you are seeking an appropriate medical care facility.

1. Take a thick dressing and cut a hole in the middle, large enough to go completely over the eye, encircling the full circumference of the eye without touching any protruding object. Make sure to moistened the eye with saline if possible or fresh water.

2. Use some sort of paper or plastic cup to put over the eye, make sure it does not put pressure on the protruding object or on the eye in any way. Place the cup over the compete eye area.

3. Cover the unaffected eye with a piece of gauze or other cloth covering as to help minimize any movement of the injured eye. Covering the unaffected eye prevents sympathetic eye movement to the damage eye, however make sure you keep the patient calm and tell them to try and stay as relaxed as possible until medical help can be located.

4. Use a roller gauze bandage or other clean wrapping cloth to wind around the head several times and hold the cup and dressing snugly, but make sure it is not too tight that it causes any pain. The main thing is to make sure the eye and eyeball is covered appropriately with the cup so as not to expose the tissues to further damage and as little contaminates as possible.

5. Now with the injured eye stabilized and the dressing applied, immediate emergency care can be sought. It is imperative that you get the injured eye no matter what type of injury immediately to an emergency care facility.

In the majority of cases eye injuries can be successfully treated with very little residual effects. Treatment and surgery for eye injuries have come a long way over the years and they are doing amazing things with even severe eye injuries these days.

References for this article include: www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/eye-injuries.htm
firstaid.webmd.com/eye-injuries-treatment
www.merck.com/mmhe/sec20/ch227/ch227b.html