Secondary traumatic hyphaema.

THE occurrence of secondary haemorrhage after a contusion with a blunt instrument is fortunately not too common, but its association with intractable glaucoma and possible blood-staining of the cornea makes its treatment necessary to prevent blindness. The purpose of this short account of two cases is to confirm the value of the hypotensive method described by Kenny (1959) and Werner (1959), which has two main objects: (1) Removal of the haemorrhage and organized blood clot from the anterior chamber. (2) Prevention of further bleeding. A method of removing the haemorrhage and clot was suggested by Pierse (1964) and Heath (1966), who recommended irrigation of the anterior chamber with urokinase; this treatment will liquefy the clot but cannot help to arrest the bleeding, and was not used in either of our cases.