Sixth Military Vision Symposium on Ocular and Vision Injury

Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Ocular injuries continue to occur in the military conflicts in the Middle East and Africa where American soldiers are deployed, as well as in terrorist and other mass casualty events in the United States. Military eye injuries have increased by 7-21% over recent years due to increased survival of individuals with previously life threatening injuries, with women having more eye injuries than men. From 2000-2010 there were 186,555 eye injuries worldwide in military medical facilities. Based on published data, during this period the total incident cost of eye injury in the military each year has been $2.282 billion, which represents superficial eye injury, non- superficial eye injury, and vision impairment related to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Added to the military eye injuries are the civilian injuries that occur in terrorist attacks and mass casualty events such as explosions from oil carrying freight cars or in the work place. Terrorist attacks on civilian targets in the United States and world-wide show no sign of abating. There is no database that analyzes eye injuries from all these types of blast events in the United States. The development of effective treatments for eye injuries from blasts is of paramount importance to preserve vision in our military personnel who are in harm's' way as well as for civilians in terrorist and mass casualty events. There is a clear need for military ophthalmologists and optometrists to interact with civilian clinicians and basic researchers to leverage new advances and technologies to repair and rehabilitate military eye injuries from blasts. The proposed symposium will provide the opportunity for this interaction.