14 DAY TRIAL // A recent case report in the New England Journal of Medicine details how, after being involved in a car accident, a girl arrived at the hospital sporting peculiar patterns on one of her eyes. These patterns were eventually revealed to be canvas imprints.
As detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the car accident that nearly cost this teenage girl her eyesight occurred in Michigan, US. At that time, the girl was 17 years old.
Information shared with the public says that, when the car the girl was traveling in collided with the one in front of it, the 17-year-old was sitting in the front passenger seat, Live Science reports.
It is unclear whether or not the teenager was wearing a seatbelt but, by the looks of it, this would not have made much difference. At least, not in terms of protecting her against the damage that the crash caused to her eyes.
Thus, the doctors who treated this 17-year-old explain that, when she arrived at the hospital, the girl kept complaining that her eyes hurt. What's more, she told doctors that she was experiencing a burning sensation.
With the help of a blue dye especially designed to reveal injuries to the cornea, i.e. the transparent front part of the eye, doctors found that one of the girl's eyes had a canvas imprint on it, and that the other's cornea had been torn.
It is believed that, when the airbags in her car deployed as a result of the crash, the girl failed to blink fast enough to protect her eyes. Hence, the airbags hit both her eyes, and caused the canvas imprint on one of the corneas and the tear in the other.
“When we looked at her under a magnified view, we could see that there was this very unusual imprint on the surface of the cornea, a rather dramatic-looking picture of the imprint of the nylon mesh pattern of the airbag cover,” explained Dr. Jonathan Trobe.
Luckily, this teenage girl did not suffer major injuries to her eyes, and made a full recovery in about two weeks' time. However, doctors warn that many individuals are not this fortunate, and that it sometimes happens that people lose their sight as a result of such incidents.
“I have seen this a lot. Actually, this case report is a really mild case of the damage that airbags can do. I was just involved, over the weekend, on a patient here in the hospital who was in a car accident with an airbag injury, and now is completely blind in one eye,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Jules Winokur.