Newport Beach Retina Specialist

Eye injuries can be frightening and traumatic and can sometimes result in the partial or complete loss of your vision. You may be forced to adjust to new life challenges. That’s why it’s so essential to protect and preserve your vision by seeing a Newport Beach retina specialist as soon as possible after an accident.

Help for Accident-Related Eye Injuries

The human eye is an amazing and complicated organ. Numerous components work together to help the eyes to take in the world and relay those messages to the brain. Structures including tiny blood vessels, sensitive nerves, and intricate muscles team up to produce eyesight.

People often take the gift of sight for granted. However, that changes quickly when the eye is damaged through a sudden injury. In some instances, the healing process can be long and involved, and everything possible needs to be done to prevent the loss of vision.

Getting care from a qualified Newport Beach retina specialist and having the resources to support those efforts is essential. When an eye injury is the result of an accident in which another party was at fault or negligent, you’ll likely want to be sure your Newport Beach retina specialist provides a well-documented assessment and treatment plan. You may need that information as evidence in the event you need to file a personal injury claim or receive workers’ compensation.   

Common Eye Injuries

Airbag Trauma

Airbags deploy quickly and explosively. There can be an impact to the face from the force of the explosion and from the cover of the airbag itself. Eye injuries can be even worse for people wearing eyeglasses are hit with the airbag. Both drivers and passengers can sustain eye injuries such as these from airbags:

• Lens rupture
• Ocular bone damage
• Iris damage
• Orbital fractures
• Traumatic cataracts
• Retinal detachment

The chemicals and gases within airbags can also cause eye issues.

Chemicals and Heat

Workplace injuries often come about from exposure to chemicals, heat, or a combination of the two. The delicate tissues of the eye can easily become injured by hazardous chemicals. Workers can use emergency eyewash stations upon exposure and should follow-up with appropriate medical treatment from an eye doctor.

Penetrating Eye Trauma

When an object penetrates the soft tissues of the eye the damage can be severe and extensive. Some of the most severe eye injuries occur when an object penetrates the tissues of the eye. When an object enters the eye, many different tissue types that can be affected, including:

• Lacerations of the cornea, iris, and lens
• Posterior segment ocular trauma
• Vitreous hemorrhage
• Intraocular foreign bodies
• Retinal detachment
• Hyphema (blood floods the fluid of the anterior chamber of the eye)
• Traumatic cataract

Penetrating eye trauma can be mild to severe depending on the depth of the penetration and the force of the impact. If you’ve sustained (or even think you’ve sustained) an eye injury after an accident, schedule an appointment with a Newport Beach retina specialist to have the damage evaluated and documented. The detailed records that Retina Associates of Orange County will provide you with after your treatment may be useful for both insurance claims and personal injury claims.

Retinal Detachment

Retinal detachment qualifies as an emergency situation because the longer that the retina remains detached without intervention, the more likely it becomes that permanent damage will occur. The retina is comprised of light-sensitive tissue that is located near the back of the eye. This tissue serves to help filter and convert the light rays that enter the eye so that the brain can process them into images. When this tissue becomes detached from necessary blood and oxygen, serious vision loss or blindness will likely occur unless medical assistance is accessed immediately.

If you are experiencing reduced or blurred vision, significant reductions in peripheral vision, floating specks drifting in and around your field of vision and/or flashes in front of your eyes, please contact a Newport Beach retina specialist immediately. These may serve as warning signs of retinal detachment.

How Is a Detached Retina Treated?

Treatment for a severely injured retina usually requires surgery. The type of procedure that may be necessary in any given case tends to depend upon whether the retina has sustained a significant tear or has completely detached.

Torn retinas are treated differently than detached retinas, simply because this condition does not always deprive the back of the eye of blood and oxygen. When a significant tear occurs, it may be necessary to help seal the retina to the back of the eye in order to prevent a complete detachment. This sealing process may be achieved in a number of ways by a retina specialist in Newport Beach, but is generally approached through either laser surgery or a freezing therapy known as cryotherapy. Both methods help to create a medically sound scar that helps to ensure that the retina remains attached to the back wall of the eye.

Complete detachment requires surgery to help maintain the functionality of the retina. Depending upon the ways in which the detachment has manifested, your retinal specialist may use one specific surgical method over another. Like torn retina patients, you may also need to undergo cryotherapy or laser therapy in order to scar the tissue and attach the retina following the initial surgical intervention. However, detached retina surgery tends to take place in an operating room, unlike torn retina procedures which may be conducted in the office of a Newport Beach retina specialist.

Certain manifestations of complete detachment may require your specialist to place a so-called scleral buckle around your eye in order to drain the fluid pooling under your detached retina. A scleral buckle is a flexible band. For obvious reasons, this procedure is not performed in an office but in an operating room.

A Newport Beach Retinal Specialist Can Help

If you or a loved one may have a detached retina, please do not wait to seek medical assistance. An experienced Newport Beach retina specialist will be able to evaluate the current state of the affected eye and determine whether medical intervention is necessary. Experiencing a torn or detached retina can be an unnerving experience. But an experienced Newport Beach retina specialist at Retina Associates of Orange County will be able to help you navigate this situation as successfully as is possible.