Post-traumatic artificial lens implants

Stintzy (i966), in a review of 450 cases of eye injuries, mostly unilateral, in children, reported the development of cataract in 26 per cent. Traumatic cataract, if not complicated by severe damage to other structures of the eye and if successfully treated by surgery, presents the surgeon and the child with the problems of unilateral aphakia. The optical correction of the latter is the crux of successful functional recovery. In the adult aphakic patient visual acuity can be and usually is preserved for long periods of life, even without optical correction. Also binocularity has been demonstrated in adults in whom a contact lens or lens implant has been fitted several decades after lens injury. This, however, does not hold true in cases of lens injury in infancy and childhood. The younger the child and the longer the interval between injury and clearing of the pupil, the more chance there is of irreparable loss of visual acuity and of binocularity. Such loss is certain to occur when no correction at all is prescribed or when the eye is equipped only with a spectacle glass (Juler, I92 1; McKinna, I96I).