Epidemiology of ocular trauma in Australia☆
Section snippets
Methods
Details of the Visual Impairment Project have been published previously.9 Briefly, a stratified, cluster sample was employed to obtain a representative sample of adults aged 40 and over who had resided in their homes for at least 6 months. In urban Melbourne, nine pairs of census collector districts were randomly selected, and in rural Victoria, four pairs of census collector districts were randomly selected. Participants were recruited via a household census and invited to attend a locally
Results
A total of 3271 (83% of eligible) urban residents and 1473 (92% of eligible) rural residents were examined. The participants did not differ significantly from the nonparticipants, except for the language spoken at home.13 The participation rates were 85% for English speakers, 76% for Greek speakers, 78% for Italian speakers, and 79% for other language speakers. The urban residents ranged in age from 40 to 98 years (mean, 58) and 54% were women. The rural residents ranged in age from 40 to 103
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first population-based report of eye injuries in Australia, and the data are important for public health education. We found eye injuries requiring doctor’s treatment to be a significant public health problem, with more than 20% of Victorians aged 40 and over having had at least one eye injury during their lifetime. Our overall rate of 34% in men is substantially higher than the rate of 20% reported in white men in the Baltimore Eye Survey, although our rate of
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2023, Medical Journal Armed Forces IndiaOcular chemical burns in the workplace: Epidemiological characteristics
2020, BurnsCitation Excerpt :It is important to know the economic effect to the worker involved who suffered these injuries, including loss of productivity, absence from work, health care costs, administrative costs and long-term health consequences. There are several studies of eye injuries across the world [1–4,11], but the current work is ground-breaking in that it collects together epidemiological data from the workplace and the economic costs generated by industrial eye events, data which warrants in-depth study due to the consequences that may result from this type of ophthalmic damage. Approximately 55% of workplace incidences with chemical products impact on the eye, and 53% of them include cleaners, workers and technicians [12].
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Supported in part by grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Canberra; the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne; the Ansell Ophthalmology Foundation, Sydney; the Estate of the late Dorothy Edols, Melbourne; and the Jack Brockhoff Foundation, Melbourne, Australia.