mmalabanan
A 14-year-old boy from Tasmania, Australia lost 75% of his vision after aiming a laser pointer on his eyes.
After pointing the small device on his eyes for a very short period of time, the teenage boy suffered permanent damage to his vision. His optometrist Ben Armitage revealed that the boy accidentally burned the retina at the back of the eye close to an area called the macular. According to Armitage, the macular is the area where your detailed central vision occurs.
The teenager didn’t feel pain at the moment he used the pointer yet his eyes and vision immediately suffered the negative effect.
“His vision is down to about 25 percent of what we call 20/20 vision and unfortunately at this stage, it’s unlikely that that vision is going to recover,” Armitage revealed.
The damage cannot be corrected with glasses but Armitage believes that there will be an improvement in terms of vision once the swelling disappears.
Because of the incident, Optometry Tasmania has advised parents not to view laser pointers or pens as toys.
“If parents purchase or allow their children to have access to these pens they ought to supervise them very, very carefully and, in fact, better off trying to warn them off them because we’ve just seen in this particular case where the future lifestyle of this young person has been seriously affected,” said Geoff Squibb, Chief executive of Optometry Tasmania.
