BENGALURU : The number of cases of firecracker-related eye injuries have dropped drastically this year. Minto Eye Hospital, which usually sees more than 30 such cases almost every year, saw just three, all of them children, on the second day of the festival.
In the first case, a 12-year-old boy, a bystander in Vijayanagar, got injured when someone lit a flower pot. The boy suffered superficial burns on his nose and eyelids, and a corneal abrasion. However, doctors are worried about the injury in his eye, which has affected his vision.
Dr Sujatha Rathod, Director of Minto Eye Hospital, said, "We hope that there is no central scarring which will impair vision." The second case was of a 13-year-old from Sampige Halli Layout who suffered a lamellar corneal tear after foreign bodies entered his eye when he was standing near a chain of firecrackers.
In the third case, a four-year-old boy near Magadi Road, suffered a conjunctival tear after fragments from a firecracker entered his eye. At Narayana Nethralaya, there were four cases. However, ophthalmologists stated that all of them were minor injuries. Dr Raghu Nagaraju, consultant ophthalmology, Apollo Hospital, stated that he came across two patients, a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old with corneal abrasions.