Special feature
Q. What can people do to properly protect their eyes
during sport?
A. Eye protection can reduce the number and severity of eye
injuries. Depending on the sport, people could use shatter-re-
sistant lens materials, sport frames and facemasks.
A sport frame is designed to shift the impact force away
from the delicate eye area to more sturdy bones of the skull,
decreasing the likelihood of damage.
Dr. Kirsten North
Recently, Optical Prism magazine spoke with the CAO’s Q. Why is it important for ECPs to educate their patients
in-house policy consultant, Dr. Kirsten North, about about the potential risks to their eyes during sport?
sports-related eye injuries and how to prevent this A. Studies have shown that 90 per cent of sport-related eye
potentially catastrophic harm.
injuries could have been prevented. While sunglasses do of-
fer protection from UV rays for outdoor sports, neither they
Q. What potential risks do sports pose to the eyes? nor contact lenses offer protection for sport-related play.
A. The most common sports-related eye injuries An ECP should educate patients on appropriate eyewear for
involve blunt trauma, from sports equipment or other
safe play. OP
players. The resulting damage will depend on the size,
solidity and velocity of the object, but can include
fractures of the bones around the eye, bleeding inside
the eye, retinal tears and detachments and surface
abrasions, to name a few.
Q. What sports are most concerning to optometrists
and why?
A. Racquet sports tend to cause optometrists the most
concern because the ball/birdie is moving at a high
rate of speed and is usually the right size to get past the
brow bones and impacts the eyeball directly. However,
basketball and baseball are the leading causes of eye
injuries each year.
Q. In what cases are regular glasses not enough pro-
tection during sport?
A. Regular glasses are not appropriate for eye protec-
tion if the sport involves collision or body contact (e.g.,
football, baseball, basketball) or if there is a projectile
involved (e.g., racket sports, golf). But even in lower-risk
sports for ocular injury (e.g., cycling, gymnastics,
swimming), there is still a possibility for eye injury and
UV damage.
Optical Prism | March 2020 33