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The Persian Wednesday Eve Festival “Charshanbe-Soori” Fireworks Eye Injuries: A Case Series

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09286580600878836

1744-5086

Mohammadreza Mansouri, Seyed-Farzad Mohammadi, Elham Hatef, Hamed Rahbari, Mohammad-Shahram Khazanehdari, Pouya Zandi, Sasan Moghimi, Niloofar Piri, Alireza Fahim,

Rabies epidemiology and control

To describe the clinical spectrum and severity of eye injuries sustained during the Persian Wednesday Eve Festival "Charshanbe-Soori" and to identify the fireworks devices involved.Prospectively, consecutive patients treated for fireworks-related eye injuries in the emergency room at Farabi Eye Hospital, Tehran, over 3 days around the occasion in 2000, 2001, and 2002 were studied.Four hundred thirty-seven cases of eye injuries with an age range of 2-74 (median 17; SD 11.1) years were studied: 84.6% were male; 18.6% of the injuries were bilateral; 79.9% of the injured were bystanders or passersby. Eleven types of devices were involved, of which seven were explosives and eight were homemade. "Narenjaks," homemade grenades, were involved in 62.2%, firecrackers in 14.8%, and sparklers in 6.2% of the events. Injuries were categorized as severe in 49% of cases, and 45 (10.4%) people were hospitalized. Five eyes with no light perception and/or enucleation, 33 cases of monocular blindness, 54 (12.3%) cases of open globe (including intraocular foreign bodies) were observed. Grenades, bystander and passerby roles, outdoor context, a relatively older age, lower socioeconomic status, and male gender in the subset of passive roles were the determinants of more severe injuries (all p values < 0.05). Lid injuries (67.7%), corneal abrasions (51.6%), hyphema (48.1%), superficial foreign bodies (32.5%), and corneal contusions (13.8%) were the five leading injuries.In Iran, fireworks cause frequent and diverse injuries during the Wednesday Eve Festival and are a leading cause of severe eye injuries and monocular blindness.