Eye Injuries Represent Significant Global Burden

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Until now, no studies have sys­tematically measured the incidence and burden of eye injury globally, encom­passing all countries and ages, and looking at all causes of injury. Using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019, as well as data from sys­tematic reviews of injury incidence for all causes of injury—including eye in­juries from foreign objects, explosives, road traffic, mechanical or nonmechan­ical (e.g., chemical, thermal, radiation) sources, and self-inflicted injuries—researchers reported that the incidence and burden of eye injury has been significant over the past three decades at the global, regional, and national levels.¹

“The occurrence of eye injuries is constantly changing. The causes of those injuries have also changed,” said study coauthor Lei Liu, MD, at the Guangdong Eye Institute in Guangzhou, China. Industrial development puts people at higher risk for eye injury, he explained.

The authors reported that exposure to mechanical forces, foreign bodies, and falls were the three leading causes of eye injury in 2019. Dr. Liu noted that globally, eye injuries caused by traffic accidents and violent conflicts are gradually increasing, too. “Those are trends we should pay attention to,” he said.

Retrospective demographic anal­ysis. The authors analyzed data from 204 reporting countries, including hospital and emergency department records, insurance claims, and surveys collected from 1990 to 2019. ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes were used to describe and categorize injuries, morbidity, and the reason for an eye injury. Disease modeling-meta regression, a Bayesian meta-regression framework, was ap­plied to incorporate multiple outcome measures into one model in order to estimate years of life that a patient lived with a disability due to eye injury.

Trends of disease burden. The number of incident cases of eye injury increased by 24%, from 48,220,830 in 1990 to 59,933,290 in 2019. “Eye injury is one of the most significantly disabling injuries, with a large number of cases in 2019 compared with 1990,” the authors wrote. Eye injuries were especially high in Australasia, with males having higher incidence than females across the 30-year study period. There was not a significant increase in years of life lived with disability in any region. Young and middle-aged individuals (ages 24 to 49 years) were more likely to sustain eye injuries compared with older people.

A public health imperative. Eye in­jury is a leading cause of blindness and disability globally, and it represents a significant economic burden, especially for low- and middle-income countries, the authors wrote. Dr. Liu said factors influencing incidence, distribution of illness, and specific causes of eye injury are complex and vary across regions and individual nations, requiring tailored injury prevention education.

—Julie Monroe, MSN, RN

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1 Cong L et al. eClinicalMedicine. Published online Aug. 9, 2023.

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Relevant financial disclosures: Dr. Liu—None.

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