Latest update from our client, Pediatric Eye Associates about Eye injury: Should you go to the ER or not

Sight is one of the essential senses, but new research says that you are probably going to the emergency room too often for vision problems.

In the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, researchers from John Hopkins University found that nearly 50% of visits to the ER for eye problems were non-emergency situations that would have been better addressed at your local pediatric ophthalmologist or urgent care center.

Statistics on eye-related injuries

The research, which tracked more than 12 million emergency room visits for eye-related injuries from 2006-2011, found that:

54.2% of visits were by males (of any age)
41.2% of visits were for emergency situations, including corneal abrasions (when the eye is scratched by a foreign body) and a foreign body in the external eye.
44.3% of visits were for non-emergency situations like conjunctivitis, styes or subconjunctival hemorrhage.

The study concluded that having better interventions to treat these non-emergent conditions outside of the emergency room could make medical resources more available for actual emergencies.