Abstract
Purpose :
The objective of this retrospective, cross-sectional study was to describe the demographics and types of crib-related ocular injuries in children under 2 years of age that occurred between 2000 and 2019, as documented by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database.
Methods :
The NEISS database was used to identify cases of crib-related ocular injuries in children between the ages of 0 and 23 months from 2000 to 2019. The NEISS reports information on emergency department (ED) visits involving a consumer product from a nationally representative sample of U.S. hospitals. Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 23.
Results :
In total, 551 weighted cases of crib-related ocular injuries were identified. By sex, age, and race, the majority of cases occurred in boys (73.2%), and the plurality of cases occurred at 9 months of age (21.9%) and in Whites (30.8%). There was no significant difference in age by sex (p = 0.227). The vast majority of cases were treated and released, rather than admitted (99.1% vs 0.9%), and occurred at home (71.7%). Documented ocular injury types included corneal abrasion (58.4%), foreign body (1.8%), contusion (5.9%), unspecified eye injury (15.1%), subconjunctival hemorrhage (16.1%), and open globe injury (3.6%). When types of ocular injury were stratified by sex, significant differences in prevalence of contusion and subconjunctival hemorrhage were identified, with contusion occurring more commonly in girls (0% vs. 21.9%; p < 0.001), and subconjunctival hemorrhage occurring more commonly in boys (22.0% vs 0%; p < 0.001). Furthermore, when ocular injury types were stratified by age, with cases divided into either 0-11 months or 12-23 months, contusion (4.8% vs. 7.4%; p = 0.022) and corneal abrasion (58.0% vs. 59.0%; p < 0.001) were more prevalent in the older age group, while subconjunctival hemorrhage (27.4% vs. 0%; p < 0.001) and open globe injury (6.2% vs. 0%; p < 0.001) were more common in the younger age group.
Conclusions :
In children under 2 years of age, between 2000 to 2019 over 500 cases of crib-related ocular injuries presented to emergency departments in the United States. The majority of injuries occurred in boys, those less than 12 months of age, and at home. The most common ocular injury was corneal abrasion, and the rate of severe ocular injury, open globe injury, was low at 3.6%. The vast majority of cases were triaged in the ED and discharged home.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.