Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — In the days following the April 8 total solar eclipse, Mass Eye and Ear has been seeing more and more people coming in for consultations about a rare kind of eye damage related to bright light.
Specifically, the particular kind of eye injury that a person can get from looking at a bright light like the sun is called solar retinopathy, which is an uncommon type of eye damage that doctors at Mass Eye and Ear said they don’t often encounter.
Following the total solar eclipse, however, the director of the Ocular Trauma Service at Mass Eye and Ear, Dr. Isaac Bleicher, said that around 30 to 40 people have come to the office with concerns about potential eye damage.
Read More: Solar Eclipse Reaches Its Peak In Massachusetts
He clarified that only one or two of them have possible permanent injuries, while the rest “maybe are just anxious and that’s manifesting with a little bit of changes in their vision, or they had a small injury that’s just below the threshold of what we can view with our instruments.”
He added that although some people may experience temporary “visual phenomena” after viewing the solar eclipse, the eclipse glasses are very effective at protecting your eyes.
Dr. Bleicher said that he strongly recommended the glasses to people he knows ahead of the April 8 eclipse, and Mass Eye and Ear as an institution also expressed the importance of wearing proper eclipse glasses through radio announcements and other messages.
Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
The main problem is viewing the eclipse without the glasses, he went on to explain.
The retina is like the eye’s camera film, he said, “but if it’s impacted by an extremely bright light like the sun, you can get a burn."
The burn can cause temporary or permanent injuries to the retina.
Dr. Bleicher shared what would happen to your vision if you have solar retinopathy. “There’s usually a black or gray area in the vision that's persistent. So it would have come on a few hours after you looked at the eclipse, and it would have stayed there.”
Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
He also shared a theory behind why the eclipse poses such a problem in terms of eye damage risks.
“One of the theories about how this happens during the eclipse is that when you’re viewing a bright light, your iris (the colored part of your eye) constricts and the pupil constricts. And so when you view the sun without the eclipse, your pupil would constrict dramatically. Theoretically, if you’re getting less light in with the eclipse, the pupil might constrict a little bit less and allow more light in.”
In general, Dr. Bleicher said, “It’s incredibly rare for us to see any injuries related to direct viewing of light. There just aren’t that many situations that people encounter on a day-to-day basis where that’s an issue” outside of specific professions like welding or ones where people work with lasers and other extremely bright lights.
Dr. Bleicher added that Mass Eye and Ear wants to help people avoid these types of injuries before they become a more serious problem.
“We don’t want to see these patients. Not that we’re not happy to take care of them, but we love to prevent vision loss as opposed to managing vision loss once it has happened.”
WBZ NewsRadio's Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.
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