- Trauma or penetration of a foreign object into the eye is a common cause of monocular blindness.
- Ocular trauma causes blindness in approximately half a million people worldwide.
- The penetration of a foreign object longer than 7 cm in the eye is exceptionally rare.
A 6-year-old boy presented to the Ophthalmology department with orbital trauma because of a penetrating object into the orbit. The foreign object penetrated his right eye when he suddenly fell while playing. According to his parents, the pencil directly went into the upper part of his orbit.
The severity of the accident caused the pencil to split into two with one of the pencil lodged in the upper cavity of his right orbit. Radiography revealed a straight, hypodense object that resembled a pencil with a hyperdense centre similar to the carbon density of a pencil in the retro-orbital space. The pencil was of indefinite depth.
The patient was immediately rushed to the operating room and a superior conjunctival peritomy was performed under general anaesthesia, at the entry point to the upper part of the conjunctiva. The pencil retrieved from the orbit was 7 cm long.
A CT scan was performed which showed complete removal of the foreign object from the orbit with no brain or ocular damage. The patient was regularly called in for a follow for two months after surgery. He showed no adverse effects from the trauma and visual acuity was 10/10.
References
Case report on the successful removal of an organic penetrating object into the orbit https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865456/
