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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences 2019; 11(01): 29-31
DOI: 10.4103/ijmbs.ijmbs_65_18
Case Report

LASER toy-induced macular burn: An illustrative case

Adam Elbarghathi
1   Department of Ophthalmology, University of Benghazi, Benghazi
,
Ruwida Abdullah
1   Department of Ophthalmology, University of Benghazi, Benghazi
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Introduction: Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (LASER) toys are widely available in the market with no clear information about their wavelength and hazardous effects. To be safe to the eyes, LASER should be classified <3b (according to international safety classification). Case History: We here report an illustrative case of macular injury post LASER toy direct exposure. A 12-year-old boy, previously known hypermetrope with left-eye (LE) amblyopia, presented complaining of drop of vision in the right eye (RE) after his colleague pointed a LASER toy directly over his RE. His corrected visual acuity (VA) was 5/60 (amblyopic) in the LE and 6/18 in the RE. The anterior segment was normal in both eyes. Fundus examination showed the LE to be normal, and the RE had a macular yellowish, oval-shaped lesion. Optical coherence tomography and fundus picture revealed central macular burn. Local and systemic corticosteroids were prescribed tapering over 9 days. After 1-week, the patient noticed some improvement in VA in RE to 6/9. Conclusion: LASER toys available in several markets are reported to be vision threatening and cause macular burn which responds partially to corticosteroids. More education and strict regulation of distribution and use of LASER toys and instruments is urgently needed.

Key-words:

Corticosteroids - LASER toys - macular burn

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.




Publication History

Received: 02 September 2018

Accepted: 30 October 2018

Article published online:
07 July 2022

© 2019. The Libyan Authority of Scientific Research and Technologyand the Libyan Biotechnology Research Center. All rights reserved. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License,permitting copying and reproductionso long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, oradapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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