Aims and objectives 1. To study causes of penetrating ocular injuries. 2. To study demographic profile of patients presenting with penetrating ocular injuries. 3. To study type of clinical presentations of penetrating ocular injuries.. 4. To study visual outcomes and prognostic factors affecting visual outcomes in penetrating ocular injuries. Method: Study included30 Patients. A detailed history was taken regarding preliminary data like age, sex, occupation time of injury, object causing injury, cause of injury. Examination included preoperative and postoperative best corrected visual acuity, slit lamp examination, intraocular pressure if possible dilated fundus with direct or indirect ophthalmoscope.X-ray orbit was done for all patients and wherever indicated CT scan of orbit was done to rule out any intraocular foreign body. Result: Majority of the patients were in the age group 20-29 years. Mean age of presentation was 25.57 years. Majority of the study participants were Males (86.3%).33.3% were children followed by 23.3% farmers and 16.7% carpenters. No safety measures were employed by any of the patients. Most common cause of ocular injury was occupational trauma followed by sport related trauma. Most of the patients presented within 24 hours of injury. According to the site of wound, cornea (60%) was the most commonly involved site followed by limbus (16.7%) and sclera (10%). Most of the wound (70%) were of size 5 mm or less. The most common object causing injury was metallic (36.7%) followed by stone (26.7%) and wooden object(16.7%).Iris tissue prolapse, traumatic cataract and hyphema were the most common finding associated with penetrating ocular injuries.73.3 % of patients had visual acuity < 6/60 and 3 % had vision 6/18 or better at presentation .In our study 40% cases underwent corneal tear repair, 10% underwent limbal tear repair, 6.7% underwent scleral tear repair, 6.7% underwent corneo-scleral tear repair. Remaining 11 out of 30 (36.6%) required additional surgery. Corneal opacity was the most common complication at the end of 3 months followed by aphakia, macular edema. The visual outcome in our study appears to be related to size of wound location of wound and Interval between occurrence of injury and surgery.Visual outcome was not to be related to Visual acuity at presentation. Conclusion: Visual impairment due to penetrating Ocular injuries may be prevented by early detection of cause and Early treatment.
