Ocular trauma from nail gun cartridge wire.

Nail guns are potentially lethal tools that fire nails in rapid succession at high velocity. The nail cartridges are held together with wire, plastic, glue, tape, or paper. When wire is used, the 2 carrier wires (Figure 1) are called the wire collation. As the nail is fired, these 2 wires are sheared off, leaving 2 barblike pieces of wire ( 6 mm) attached to the nail. The 2 pieces are then sheared off the nail as it penetrates the surface. Ocular nail-gun injuries reported so far describe nails as the cause of injury. To our knowledge, there have been no reported ocular injuries from the wire collation. We believe that flying pieces of wire collation from nail guns represent a previously unreported risk of ocular injury. In this article, we report 3 consecutive patients with penetrating ocular injuries from short pieces of wire ejected while using nail guns.