Blink
Industrial Laser Injury
By Ruth Boyman, MD, and Gary Abrams, MD, Kresge Eye Institute, Detroit, and edited by Michael P. Kelly, FOPS
Photographed by Zlatan Sadikovic, Kresge Eye Institute, Detroit
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A 20-year-old man presented with a chief complaint of blurred vision in the right eye. Two hours earlier, the patient had been working in a laser laboratory, where he was hit in the right eye with the emission from an industrial laser unit. He reported that, immediately after the incident, he saw a dark streak moving across his field of vision, upward from the temporal side.
Visual acuity in the right eye was 20/60, intraocular pressure was 13 mmHg, and there was no afferent pupillary defect. The anterior segment and lens were normal. Vitreous hemorrhage obscured the view of the optic nerve. There was a smooth, dark, localized mound of subretinal hemorrhage nasal to the opticdisc. The macula appeared normal. B-scan ultrasonography showed the retinal pigment epithelium/choroid layer to be flat, with overlying retinal elevation on the nasal edge of the optic disc.
The patient was diagnosed with vitreous and subretinal hemorrhage secondary to industrial laser injury.
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