A Georgia eye surgeon has revealed the most common and painful injuries that have caused patients to go blind.
Dr. Lauren Yancey, an ophthalmologist at the Georgia Vision Institute, took to TikTok this week to share a public service announcement on “how not to go blind.”
“Not everyone wants to live longer, but you certainly want to be able to see it when you do,” he said in the video, which has more than 45,000 views.
Dr. Yancey said her warnings come as spring arrives in the U.S. and more Americans spend time outdoors.
The first piece of advice from the ophthalmologist, who has 163,000 followers, was not to sleep with contact lenses.
“Change your contact lenses regularly because contact lens infections are horrible,” she said.
Dr. Lauren Yancey, an ophthalmologist at the Georgia Vision Institute, took to TikTok this week to share a public service announcement on “how not to go blind.”
Dr. Yancey recommends avoiding sleeping with contact lenses in, as this can cut off oxygen to the cornea.
About 45 million Americans wear contact lenses, and a third of them have admitted to sleeping in them, the CDC estimates.
According to the FDA, wearing contact lenses for an extended period of time, such as while sleeping, significantly reduces the amount of oxygen reaching the cornea, the transparent part of the eye that allows light to enter.
Over time, this can lead to vision loss due to the death of cells in the eye.
Dr. Yancey mentioned that she had seen a patient that day who had a contact stuck “right in the center of her vision” and it was unclear if her vision would return to normal. “We’ll have to see how it goes,” she said.
He also recommended caution when opening boxes with sharp tools such as knives, screwdrivers and box cutters. “Please don’t pull towards you,” she said. “Those are all the things I had to sew to close my eyes and use them to open a box.”
‘Stab down and pull back, don’t pull towards you. If you are right-handed, it will always go directly to the right eye.
He advised caution when opening boxes with sharp tools such as knives, screwdrivers and razors. “Please don’t pull towards you,” she said. ‘Those are all the things I had to sew to close my eyes and use them to open a box’
“If you are children, never go near someone who is mowing the grass,” Dr. Yancey said, noting that flying grass clippings can cause eye injuries.
Injuries like these could result in severe vision loss or complete loss of an eye.
Additionally, Dr. Yancey warned that as more people go outdoors in the spring weather, be careful around someone working in the yard because grass clippings quickly fly into your eyes.
“If you’re a parent, don’t let your kids run outside while you’re mowing the lawn or operating a weed eater or (rotary cutter),” he said.
“If you are children, never go near someone who is mowing the grass.”
“Never try to get the attention of your parents, or a friend, or your neighbor, while they’re on the lawnmower or on the lawn mower or have weed killer, anything like that, on their hands.”
“Usually it’s not the person operating the mower, but the person in the path of whatever is spraying the sides.”
Finally, Dr. Yancey discouraged the use of Nerf guns and other toys that fire projectiles due to eye injuries.
In 2018, a nine-year-old boy in Wales lost an eye after a friend shot him with a Nerf gun pellet.
Six years earlier, he had been blinded in that eye when he was hit by a toy arrow.
The granules have also been shown to damage the retina, a layer of tissue at the back of the eyeball, which could lead to blindness or blurred vision.
However, Dr. Yancey noted that it can take years for eye damage to clear up.
This includes bleeding in the eye known as a hyphema.
‘Usually that won’t blind you now. It will just leave you blind later, when you get traumatic glaucoma later in life,” she said.
“You’ll probably be fine as a kid with just a hyphema, and then in the future we’ll have to deal with all the problems that will cost you.”
In the comments, Dr. Yancey also noted that a patient lost an eye to a golf ball.