When contact lens wearers are sent to the hospital unconscious, like from a car accident for example, is part of the process to check for contact lenses and remove them once the more immediate life threatening issues are handled?
And how are they removed? Soft ones can be “pinched out”, but hard lenses are a different process. Perhaps with a small suction cup, which is used even under normal circumstances for certain hard lenses, like semi-scleral?
Unless there is a facial injury, contact lenses are not an immediate priority.
If the patient remains unconscious, the contact lenses will be noted during frequent pupil exams.
Yes there exists a small suction cup device for removing contacts, but I’ve never seen it actually used.
It is very easy to remove contacts, soft or hard, from someone who is unconscious.
They aren’t squinting their eyes or otherwise interfering with the process.
Thanks steatopygia!
The standard method to remove RGP (hard) contacts is to put a finger on the outside corner of the eye, press down, and pull outward.
That said when I wore RGPs, there were rare occurrences where it came off the cornea, and I simply could not remove them from the sclera. I had to wait for the swelling to go down. This was very rare, but trauma (could) affect things, so the suction tool (e.g.) would help.
I wear scleral contacts, and I always use the suction tool to remove them. That’s how the ophthalmologist taught me to do it. I’ve never tried to remove them any other way, but it seems like it would be difficult and/or painful at best. Of course if the wearer was unconscious he wouldn’t care about getting fingers poked in his eye.
–Mark
We don’t usually pay attention to contacts in my ER, maybe if we’re dealing with an eye injury, but I can’t remember the last time it came up.
FWIW, I’m an insulin dependent diabetic so I wear a Medic Alert necklace stating as such. When I ordered it I also had in inscribed with WEARING CONTACT LENSES for good measure…