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Foreign body
Foreign bodies in the eye are all substances which are in the eye and aren't proper to the natural structure of the eye. You can hurt the different structures of the eye or cause inflammations depending on species and size.
By inattentiveness or, if the velocity of certain objects is so rapid that they overcome the natural blink reflex, foreign bodies reach the eyes.
These are frequent with children:
- Grains of sand:
Sand games succeeded in you or by the wind into the eyes.
- Insects:
By their high velocity they overcome the blink reflex of the eyes (also with adults).
- Eyelashes:
You reach lightly the eyes by graters.
- Plant parts of trees and bushes:
A back jerking branch or the top of a holly can - of alone the body greater the children and the velocity here - rapidly reach the eyes.
- Sharpen objects like scissorses, knives, sticks and pins:
Let your children never run around with such objects. Older children should carry these objects to below with the pointed end.
Arrows of the archery or Dart arrows:
An utmost caution is advisable in the two cases!
Most foreign bodies only are at the surface of the eyes therefore on the conjunctiva or on the inside of the eyelids. You recognize this by this that the foreign body moves freely over the white part of the eye. By the amplified lacrimation the foreign body is rinsed out by themselves most.
Foreign bodies, however, also penetrate into the eyeball and/or are stuck. The consequence is a perforating eye injury (drilling through). It represents an acute emergency!
If a foreign body is in the eye, then the following troubles appear:
The eyes start strongly to water. The child has to open the eye a reluctance. Sometimes a rapid blink has to be watched, too (wink). The child has the need to rub the eye.
If the foreign body penetrates and is stuck further into the eye, further troubles arrive:
Blurred vision and swelling of the eyelid are sore, redden.
You can try to remove small, visible, not tight-fitting foreign bodies (grains of sand, dust particles, small flying, eyelashes) yourself:
- Ask your child to look up. Draw the sub-eyelid down to see whether the foreign body is there. With a clean cloth you can remove the foreign body. Sometimes it is helpful to touch and to remove there it in the direction of the nose (canthus).
- If the object is under the top eyelid, then you can use two methods.
1. You keep a cotton tip on the top eyelid. Take hold of the eyelashes of the top eyelid and they open the top eyelid about the cotton tip back. They remove the foreign body.
2. You take hold of the top eyelid at the eyelashes, you draw it over the sub-eyelid and you let it glide back about the eyelashes of the sub-eyelid slowly.
- These methods are not effective then clear water washes them the foreign body as much as possible.
If all these measures don't help, then you find an ophthalmologist with your child. You should go also to it if the pains don't stop within the next hour after the foreign body resection. There can be an injury of the cornea, for example.
You take up the following measures at an injury of the eyeball or the eyelid by a not visible foreign body (glass, metal) or by an obviously tight-fitting object (arrow, branch, spine) or at an incision injury (fingernail, sharp table border):
- Never pull the object out.
- Stop your child from rubbing the injured eye.
- Lay out an eye bandage. Give a sterile compress to this on the two eyes without pressure also at only unilateral injury on the eyes. Fix these by a triangular bandage.
- Calm her child.
- Contact the emergency service.
The ophthalmologist will proceed as follows:
- At first the eye is made insensitive to pain by anesthetic eye drops.
- The foreign body is identified with the help of a fissure lamp microscope and fluorescein guttas and it is looked whether the eye was perforated.
The small patient is hospitalized and included stationarily at a perforation. As a rule, an operation is -- possibly necessary under general anesthesia and intensive antibiotics medical treatment. Tetanus protection sufficing to one must be remembered (take vaccinating card) along!.
If only a small foreign body is, however, in the cornea, he is removed under the microscope. For one to two days an eye bandage is laid out and orders an antibiotic ointment. Small injuries of the cornea usually heal very rapidly within 48 hours. The next day the eye is checked once again to exclude an infection or a corneal ulcer.
These informations may be considered a substitute for a piece of medical advice in no case. The content of health-illness.com doesn't can and may be put into any case to make diagnoses or carry out self medical treatment independently.
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