Causes and Treatment For Eyelid Lacerations

When you talk about eyelid lacerations, you generally mean cuts in the skin around the eyelids. This type of eye injury needs to be addressed because it can cause minor deformities in the appearance of your eyes.

The most common reason or cause for eyelid lacerations is trauma. It can be from a sports game, an accident, or anything else that involves physical contact. Sometimes, stitches will be required so you need to see an eye doctor as soon as possible. Furthermore, eye lacerations due to trauma might affect your tear ducts since our tear ducts are found in the eyelids.

Your eye doctor should also check to see if the trauma caused any damage to your eyes. This is very important because if he fails to check the eye, then a bigger eye problem could ensue, possibly even an eye infection.

Eye treatments for eye lacerations will depend on the patient’s medical history and health. Since most eye lacerations happen to males - young children to adults, it is important to find out what the medical health history is. For children with eye lacerations that are not as a result of a sports or game, expect to have to entertain questions from the doctors regarding the circumstances around the eye injury. This is part of their protocol.

Inform the eye doctor as well about any allergies or current medical treatments the child is going through at the moment. This, too, is important because knowing the medical health of the patient will help the doctor prescribe a medication, should any be required, that will not run counter to any existing treatments.

The eye treatment can range from a pain reliever to stitching. If stitching is required, the doctor will have to put local anesthesia to help the child with the procedure. However, if the patient is unwilling to sit still for an extended period of maybe 30 minutes, then the only option left would be to sedate him. Stitches normally will be removed anywhere from 5 to 7 days after. There could be scarring however, most often, since the eyelid has folds in it, it will not affect the appearance at all.

For major trauma like a dog bite, there will have to be other procedures to follow like eye infection from the saliva of the dog, treatment for rabies, and maybe even cosmetic surgery if the trauma is severe.

• If the laceration is simple, as determined by your child's physician, the cut will be sutured (stitched). Local anesthetic drops may be placed in the eye and injected into the tissue prior to the suturing. The sutures will usually be taken out five to seven days after the injury.
• Sedation or general anesthesia may be needed for younger, uncooperative children.
• For larger lacerations, or if there is any involvement of the eye, an ophthalmologist may be consulted to evaluate and treat the wound.