Question
Hi,
After months of asking our employer to move rust converter to a lower shelf for sale, the inevitable happened. I was getting a bottle of rust converter down for a customer, and the lid fell off and spilled into both my eyes.
As you can imagine,after seeing what this product can do to concrete, I was convinced I was going to lose my eye sight. I was taken to hospital and had 5 liters of saline flushed through my eyes. Since then I had noticed my vision had deteriorated considerably, so had my doctor refer me to an eye specialist who said my problem was due to age and refereed me to an optometrist to get glasses.
I made an appointment to see one the next day. He tested my eyes and found I had mild corneal scar tissue (which was more than likely due to the acid spill).
He was quite puzzled as to why I had blurred vision in my left eye....so he did more tests...and found that I had a cataract forming in that eye.
I don't know why people wont believe this was all caused by the acid spill, as I had no problem what so ever with my vision before this happened !!
Tell me,can a persons eyes deteriorate so quickly,(from having nothing wrong with them last September), to all these things if I didn't have the acid spill.?
Thanks
Answer
Thanks for your Question
Ocular Irrigation by saline fluid is very important for chemical eye injuries. I am not sure if you visited an eye doctor directly after the irrigation or not but usually an eye doctor should examined the patient for evaluation and for adding eye drops such as steroid eye drops, artificial tears, antibiotics eye drops and so on. Follow up should be determined according to the severity of injury.
You said that you were diagnosed with mild corneal scar which could be due to chemical burn but i am not sure.
Cornea acts like a barrier to protect the intraocular structures and in order of cataract to develop from chemical burn, the acid or alkaline should penetrate deep through the cornea to reach the lens and in this case, your cornea should be almost completely damaged and scared.
Another way that cataract can develop after chemical eye injuries is corticosteroid eye drops which can accelerate the formation of cataract. At Age of 50s, mild form of cataract is common.
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Comments
By Kelly B
I have had phosphoric acid sprayed into both my eyes and face but my eyes were and are still damaged. It has been 15 years, I have had lost my tear ducts which were seared due to the acid the doctors have cauterized my upper and lower eye punctums, borderline glaucoma and going to court this month to fight the insurance company which states I'm all right.
I've CHF (heart failure 2006) Now I have cancer which I just finished radiation treatments. Nobody in my family have any of these conditions, could it be from the injury that took place?
If any body out there knows the long term effect of this chemical.
Please let me know
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