A piece of iron pierced the cornea of 17-year-old Mykhailo Semkiv, and he almost went blind in his right eye. His vision dropped by 90%.
However, the ophthalmologists at St Nicholas Children’s Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv were able to restore the patient’s ability to see 100%.
At the age of 17, Mykhailo from Lviv region is already a jack of all trades. He is studying to become an electrician at a vocational school, knows everything about repairs and construction, and is always making things. One day, the teenager was cutting a board with a power saw when the blade hit an obstacle – there was a screw in the wood. A piece of it hit Mykhailo’s right eye. In addition to severe pain, he felt that the image before his eyes instantly became blurred.
The young man did not immediately seek help at the hospital. At first, he pulled the fragment out on his own with a cotton swab. In the evening, he dabbed his eyes in the hope that it would go away in the morning. However, it only got worse. The next day, the pain got worse, and his vision continued to decline. It was then that the teenager finally turned to the specialists at St Nicholas Hospital for help.
After examining Mykhailo under a slit lamp (a special microscope), the ophthalmologists found that the patient had a penetrating wound of the cornea of his right eye without a foreign body. In simple words, a 2-mm fragment of a screw had pierced the cornea and his vision dropped to 10% out of 100.
“Normally, our eyes are elastic. The patient had a hole punctured in the cornea, through which fluid began to leak. The eye pressure began to drop, and the eye itself began to lose its elasticity and, in fact, the ability to see. We fitted Mykhailo with a contact lens to close the hole and prevent the fluid from leaking out. Then we prescribed medications and hoped that the hole would heal on its own,” says Anna Shpychak, an ophthalmologist at St. Nicholas Hospital.
When the doctors saw that, unfortunately, the hole was not closing on its own, they decided to operate. Otherwise, an infection could get inside the wound, irreversible inflammatory processes would begin and the guy could simply lose his eye.
Under a microscope, the ophthalmologists stitched up the cornea. This operation lasts only 5 minutes, but the result is impressive. On the second day after the surgery, Mykhailo’s vision was fully restored.
The doctors also remind nail technicians to follow safety precautions and wear protective goggles during their work.