Summary
Eye-related injuries in Australia is the third in a series of national reports providing an overview of eye health in Australia. This report contains information on eye injuries drawn from a range of data sources.
Key findings
Generally, eye injuries were found to be more common for males than for females, particularly those of working age.
General practice
- Eye injuries are only a small proportion (0.2%) of presentations to general practice, with 46% of presentations associated with a foreign body in the eye.
- Almost half of all eye injury presentations required medication and two in five required a procedural treatment.
Emergency departments
- Eye injury constitutes 6% of injury presentations to Victorian emergency departments (EDs).
- Four-fifths of presentations involved males; the majority were of working age.
- More than half of presentations were due to a foreign body in the eye.
- Only 3% of ED presentations required hospitalisation.
Hospitalisations
- More than two-thirds of hospitalised eye injury cases involved males.
- Fracture of bones around the eye and superficial injury around the eye were the most common first occurring eye diagnoses, constituting more than half of hospitalised eye injury cases.
- Falls, assault and transportation were the main types of mechanism of injury for eye-related hospitalisations.
- Hospitalised eye injuries involving Indigenous Australians occurred at a much higher rate (234 cases per 100,000) than for other Australians (79 per 100,000).
Workers compensation
- The most common diagnosis for eye-related injury and disease compensation claims was a foreign body in the eye. The median time lost from work because of a foreign body in the eye in 2004-05 was 1.5 weeks.
- The most common mechanism of injury for work-related eye injury was being hit by moving objects.