Pediatric Golf-Related Ophthalmic Injuries

Abstract

To document ophthalmic morbidity of golfrelated injuries in children and to report specific injury patterns. Design: A noncomparative, interventional, retrospective case series of 11 pediatric patients treated at 2 institutions for ophthalmic trauma resulting from golfrelated injuries during 15 years. Results: Eleven eyes of 11 patients were injured. There were 6 boys and 5 girls, with a mean age of 10.2 years (age range, 7-14 years). Ten patients were injured by golf clubs and 1 patient by a golf ball. One injury occurred on a golf course. At the initial ophthalmic examination, visual acuity was 20/20 in 4 eyes (36%), 20/25 to 20/80 in 3 eyes (27%), no light perception in 3 eyes (27%), and undeterminable in 1 eye (9%). Nine of 11 patients required surgery. Follow-up ranged from 0 to 66 months (mean follow-up, 12 months). Three of 11 subjects had permanent deficits, including blindness, decreased vision, and anophthalmia. Final visual acuity was no light perception in 2 eyes (18%), 20/70 in 1 eye (9%), and 20/20 or better in 8 eyes (73%). Conclusions: The findings from this series reveal that pediatric ophthalmic golf injuries, although rare, may be devastating to the eye, periocular adnexa, and visual system. Among our cases, most injuries occurred off the golf course, many required surgery, and some resulted in permanent loss of vision.

Visual and anatomic outcomes of golf ball-related ocular injuries

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Of the 22 patients described herein, 40.9% had open-globe injuries and 22.7% eventually underwent enucleation. The BETT provided a simple, comprehensive, and unambiguous method for describing GROIs.…”

“…If ocular injury occurs by direct impact while the golf ball is traveling at a high velocity, globe rupture is hard to avoid. [7][8][9][10][11] Even in penetrating injuries caused by broken glasses, the direct impact may result in extensive eyewall injuries, as occurred in Cases 6 and 7. These explanations could also account for the mechanism of orbital wall fracture in GROIs.…”

“…Although golf-related ocular injuries (GROIs) were uncommon and accounted for only 1.5-5.6% of sports-related ocular traumas, [1][2][3][4][5] GROIs are often devastating, requiring enucleation in numerous cases. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Although previous studies provided informative results regarding clinical courses and prognosis of GROIs, the injury definition terms were not standardized (eg, rupture injury, penetrating injury) and were used ambiguously between studies. [13][14][15] In addition, no study has assessed and/or categorized GROIs in a way that is predictive of visual and anatomical prognoses.…”

A Scoping Review of the Associations of Golf with Eye Injuries in Adults and Children

“…Furthermore, of the 6 studies which describe visual acuity, 34 (47.9%) out of the 71 patients had significant reductions in visual acuity below 20/40 Snellen, including those with no light perception [ 8 – 13 ]. As most studies reported visual acuity using the 20-foot US Snellen notation, this same notation was used for this review [ 8 , 9 , 11 , 12 ]. For studies using the 6-meter UK based notation [ 10 , 13 ], visual acuity changes below 6/12 were recorded and used to demonstrate impairment in visual acuity.…”

“…This review regards any changes to visual acuity as a result of GROI as significant. Globe rupture was reported in 26 cases of which 22 (84.6%) were the result of impact from golf balls.Orbital fractures were reported in 5 studies [ 8 , 9 , 11 – 13 ] and were present in 30 (50%) out of the 60 patients reported.…”