War can be anything but easy on the eyes

Ocular wounds outnumbering amputations 2 to 1

War can be anything but easy on the eyes
By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Wednesday Nov 14, 2007 11:19:42 EST

ARLINGTON, Va. — Two days before a 10-mile race here, Army 1st Lt. Ivan Castro is explaining how he will run tethered to another soldier — one who can see.

As he speaks, his wife lovingly extends her right hand to Castro’s face, fingers outstretched. But Evelyn Galvis pauses inches away.

“I used to be able to reach out and touch him, caress him, without telling him first, ‘I’m going to touch your face,’” she said. Now, “if I just reach out and touch him, he’ll startle.”

Castro, 40, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more than 1,100 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan — 13 percent of all seriously wounded casualties — to undergo surgery for damaged eyes. That is the highest percentage for eye wounds in any major conflict dating to World War I, according to research published in the Survey of Ophthalmology.

It’s a reflection of how eye injuries have become one of the most devastating consequences of a war in which roadside bombs, mortars and grenades are the most commonly used weapons against U.S. troops. Brain injuries and amputations have long been the focus of the damage such weapons are inflicting, but in recent weeks the Army has acknowledged that serious eye wounds have accumulated at almost twice the rate as wounds requiring amputations.

Body armor that protects vital organs and the skull is saving lives. But troops’ eyes and limbs remain particularly vulnerable to the blizzard of shrapnel from such explosions.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/gns_eyeinjuries_071114/