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Medical Forum / General / Vision / February 2008retina damage from infrared laser :(
Hello three days ago, at my work, i had to install a free space optic transceiver for some customer , its an infrared laser, around 830-860nm at 16mW power, class 1m, its used to connect two computer networks between buildings. Both tranceivers have a telescopes built in what are used to align both heads to point at each other. Anyway, i was looking through that telescope while both tranceivers where on, so laser beam was entering my eye through a telescope, and an eye contacts , what i was wearing at that time. I was only looking through my right eye tho. Anwyay, the result is that now i feel a pain at the back of my right eye, like a needle picking inside my eye, and my vision is worse then the left eye. Also, that dark dot (pupil?) is bigger then in the left eye. I thought that maybe it would go away after a little while but it hasn't, now its third day, and the pain doesn't stop at all:( actually its not constant pain , sometimes smaller sometimes more noticible that i can't fall asleep. so i looked it up on wikipedia what does it say about class 1m: "A Class 1M laser is safe for all conditions of use except when passed through magnifying optics such as microscopes and telescopes. " and i was looking through a telescope and an eye contact lens:( from further reading i learned that such infrared laser can burn retina in the eye ball, and cause the sight to be blurry. What do you think , is my right eye permanently damaged? can retina regenerate? is there any chance that my eye will heal after some time? :-( regards Tom tomasz.kk@gmail.com wrote in news:c1f6df68-3140-431d-941d-19bb3ec1b640 @s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com: > What do you > think , is my right eye permanently damaged? can retina > regenerate? is there any chance that my eye will heal after some > time? :-( Retina cannot regenerate. I'd suggest seeing an ophthalmologist, and fill out any accident reports applicable at your place of employ.  SignatureScott Reverse name to reply > "A Class 1M laser is safe for all conditions of use except when passed > through magnifying optics such as microscopes and telescopes. " Glass and plastic are partly opaque to infrared. If a real danger of retinal burn exists, your equipment should have been pasted with all sorts of warnings and labels telling you not to view the emitter through a telescope. > and i was looking through a telescope and an eye contact lens:( from > further reading i learned that such infrared laser can burn retina in > the eye ball, and cause the sight to be blurry. You didn't say your vision was blurry. You said it hurt and your pupil was big. If you have a significant retinal burn, with macular edema, the center of your vision in the right eye should be diminished when looking at fine print. > What do you > think , is my right eye permanently damaged? Probably not. > can retina > regenerate? No, but it can recover from swelling and blisters. > is there any chance that my eye will heal after some > time? :-( I'm not yet convinced you have any real damage. You have intermittent pain which might be sinus problems, and 1 person in 4 has a difference between their pupils. Almost surely any workman's comp claim will have to show a decrease in measured acuity, and there's little chance of succeeding unless you go see a doctor and document the indident with your employer. -MT, OD Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor , she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight. She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and not to look into laser in the future. The doctor also prescribed some drops what i should pour into my eye. I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because the damage was done inside my eye. Anyway, today morning, i thought the pain was gone, but this afternoon it came back even stronger, so definitely something is hurt. I don't intend to sue my employer, although actually my superior told me that its safe to look through that telescope, but i just don't want to mess with him, and i'm leaving that company anyway. Prior to installation i also asked a producer whether its safe, and they sent me some certificates http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3938/laserrm6.jpg saying that it is totally safe, either class 1 and class 1m their laser products. Only after i realized something is wrong with my eye i started searching the net and found out that class 1m lasers are not safe when look through the optical lenses, and i was wearing eye contacts and looked through the telescope. That laser emits 16mW light, while after focused it is hundreds of Wats inside the eye. I wrote them back and tell what has happened, but they just stopped answering me. I just feel bad that i trusted them, and i should have rather checked it myself :-( anyway, as i said the pain is still strong, so i'm just waiting till its gone, and hope my vision will recover. previous link doesn't work, this should be ok: http://images31.fotosik.pl/132/c2ba2de8561082cc.jpg these are the certificates are received from a producer. -- regards Tom In article <a0edc898-7f6a-4554-b0e8-efef267ea02e@n20g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, > Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor , > she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because > the damage was done inside my eye. I'm not a doctor, but based on my experience with drops, *lots* of experience, most of them penetrate the eye and work inside. There are various tricks to this, otherwise the drops just drain into your sinuses without much chance to work. If you weren't trained on these, call your pharmacist or the doctor's office and ask. SignatureDan Abel Petaluma, California USA dabel@sonic.net On Feb 5, 10:18 am, tomasz...@gmail.com wrote: > Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor , > she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight. [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > it myself :-( anyway, as i said the pain is still strong, so > i'm just waiting till its gone, and hope my vision will recover. look, you need to see a retina specialist. a general medical doctor or emergency room doctor using a "flashlight" to examine your eye sounds ridiculous. anyway, if you had actual laser damage to your retina the effect would be vision blurring or vision loss rather than pain. eye drops would be almost worthless. but of course I wholeheartedly agree that you should not look directly at a laser again with a telescope! >Only after i realized something is wrong with my eye i started >searching the net and found out that class 1m lasers are not safe when >look through the optical lenses, and i was wearing eye contacts and >looked through the telescope. That laser emits 16mW light, while >after focused it is hundreds of Wats inside the eye. I wrote them >back and tell what has happened, but they just stopped answering me. It's not looking through lenses that's the problem. That warning was probably left vague to err on the side of caution. Looking at a laser through contact lenses doesn't change anything over a person who doesn't need them to see clearly. Looking through a telescope, however, is another question. It's kind of counter-intuitive, what a telescope actually does. It makes stars brighter, because they are so far away that they can't be resolved as anything but point sources. So all the extra light gathered by a telescope lens is focused on the same spot. But for anything that's not an optical point source, the telescope magnifies the size of the image. It's collecting more light, but spreading that light over a larger area. The more the image is magnified, the dimmer it is (the same amount of light spread is over a larger area). As it turns out, any extended image (i.e. not a point source) will be brighter to your naked eye than through a telescope. A laser very far away might appear to be a point source to a telescope, but lasers are also coherent light. Any lens larger than the beam width is already collecting all of the light, so it wouldn't look any brighter through the telescope than to the naked eye. As an extended image, the beam will be enlarged by the telescope. The total energy of the beam will be spread over a larger area of your retina (whatever isn't absorbed or reflected by the lenses - glass and plastic are fairly opaque to infrared). That doesn't necessarily make it safe. I'm not familiar with the nature of class 1M ratings. You can safely look at the sun with your naked eye when it's reasonably close to the horizon, without risk of vision loss. That's because the heat can be adequately dissipated by your retina. But if you look through a telescope, the sun will be dimmer (because it's magnified), but spread over a much larger part of your retina. The heat will not be dissipated fast enough, and you'll suffer permanent loss of vision. Something similar could be true of the laser - it's safe to look at with the naked eye, but not magnified (again, something your contacts can't do). Signature- Mike Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail. p.clar...@gmail.com wrote: >look, you need to see a retina specialist. a general medical doctor >or emergency room doctor using a "flashlight" to examine your eye >sounds ridiculous. it was an emergency hospital, but with different departments, and i went to an eye specialist, on a separate floor, so it wasn't just a general doctor. i could always go to another eye doctor to get a second opinion tho. And it wasn't a regular flashlight, definitely some special one, it was emitting a vertical beam into my eye, and she was looking through some sort of microscope, and examined both of my eyes, asking me to look left, right, up and down. Before that she gave me some eye drops to make my pupils bigger, i had to wait like half an hour. >anyway, if you had actual laser damage to your retina the effect would >be vision blurring or vision loss rather than pain. eye drops would >be almost worthless. i know, if my retina had been burned completely i would have lost my sight, fortunately it hadn't, but something was damaged, the question is what and how much? normally i wear -2 contacts or glasses to see well, and after this laser accident my right eye vision got worse, its like it requires -3 to see sharp, because that eye doctor allowed me to look through a stronger lens and i could see sharper, but i don't know how many diopters was that. And also my right pupil is still noticeable bigger which is weird, and of course that annoying pain doesn't go away. I'm still hoping i'll recover from it, i'm pouring those eye drops every couple of hours and started taking multivitamin pills, and drinking carrot juice, which i read contains vitamin A , good for eyes. Neil Brooks wrote: >What were the drops she gave you?? Can you provide the name (or, at >least, the active ingredient)?? the eye drops i got are called: diclofenacum natricum 0.1%, 5ml. There are some ingredients listed on the box like: Polysorbate 80, bor acid, sodium chloride, borax, water, and some other ingredient which i can't translate, something with chloride. >I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They >ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > >I hope you're okay. Of course i told about this at my work, but it just made my boss mad like he was afraid, so i told him that this only my business, as i said i'm leaving that company anyway, for other reasons. I also had to deal with microwaves transceivers what used to give me a headaches for several days. For now i don't have anything to compensate, and i hope i won't , i normally go to work as usual. In the morning when i wake up , i almost don't feel any pain, but later today it gets stronger, and afternoon its annoying, and its strange because its like going down inside my head and to my right arm and reaching my hand, like the pain is following some nerve path. KlausK wrote: >You should see a retinal specialist or at least a general ophthalmologist >ASAP. i don't think there are such specific doctors like 'retinal specialist' in my country, only ophthalmologists, which is 'eye doctor'. And i understand that its hard to examine an eyeball even for a specialist. So thats why i don't know what exactly that laser burned , whether only retina cells or some nerves too, what would explain why i feel pain. >[...]A laser very far away might appear to be a point source to a >telescope, but lasers are also coherent light. Any lens larger than >the beam width is already collecting all of the light, so it wouldn't >look any brighter through the telescope than to the naked eye. [........] Mike, thanks for an interesting writeup. a few words about that laser transceiver i was dealing with, here is its front: http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3174/laserwk7.jpg and the backplate with a telescope viewfinder i was looking through: http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6908/laser2jv8.jpg that laser produces kind of a cone beam, so it was around 50cm diameter infrared laser beam pointing at me, the source of the laser was ~100 meters away. And i think infrared can easily pass through glass, eg my infrared keyfob to open the car. And those infrared lasers can be even installed indoors behind windows, one of my colleague had such installation. I read that only some special colored glass can block infrared, so there are some amber protective goggles available. So in my case my eye didn't pick a whole laser beam just a part of it which was magnified by that telescope, but it was enough to hurt my eye, i was installing it for about half an hour although , i wasn't look through that telescope all the time, but i can't remember for how long. thanks all for your responses. regards, Tom On Feb 6, 9:35 am, tomasz...@gmail.com wrote: > p.clar...@gmail.com wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 103 lines] > regards, > Tom good reply. the additional information is significant. then you have seen an ophthalmologist and had a dilated fundus exam. sounds like appropriate care. maybe additional testing with a nerve fiber layer analyzer would have been more complete. maybe also a thorough threshold-level visual field analysis too. perhaps they did do these tests already. the drops you are taking is called Voltaren in the US and many other countries. it is used to reduce inflammation, and it is known that deeper penetration of these drops, so as to provide retina-level therapeutic effects, actually does work. so using the drops seems appropriate too. If it takes a stronger lens powers to see more clearly, then that does not at all indicate that the health of your eye has been damaged. the determinate is whether you can obtain clear 20/20 vision with intact peripheral vision. doesn't matter if it takes you a -3.00 lens to do it, or a -2.00 lens to do it. it would mean that you have gotten more nearsighted, but if you can see clearly in that eye then that would be normal. > the drops you are taking is called Voltaren in the US and many other > countries. it is used to reduce inflammation, and it is known that > deeper penetration of these drops, so as to provide retina-level > therapeutic effects, actually does work. so using the drops seems > appropriate too. I agree the Voltaren was appropriate but I wonder if it was for corneal pain, or just a hail-mary shotgun approach. It's hard to believe there was retinal damage from an IR source, all the way through those telescope optics, then the cornea and crystalline lens, with no mention of lost acuity and no sensation of heat. Big stretch there, but it won't convince anyone. In the US we'd be asking 12 idiots to decide. -MT Thanks all for your feedback. yes, i am from Poland, and those lasers come from Israel, we buy lots of electronics from there. It seems like imageshack is having problems, so i'm reposting the pictures of that transceiver: front lenses, the smaller one emits the laser beam: http://images34.fotosik.pl/134/2d0b2994a856bf7d.jpeg the back panel, with a telescope i was looking through: http://images31.fotosik.pl/134/7ad52d6abb360725.jpg and here is a drawing describing it's laser beam divergence, the longer the distance, the wider the beam: http://images33.fotosik.pl/134/c32f912d089c7c90.jpeg So that 16mW laser beam was definitely wider when entering the telescope and then my eye. But as Dave said, telescope magnified part of it, but i don't know to what degree, but according to what i've read it could be increased to hundreds of wats focused to some small laser spot scribing the retina. At the time i was looking through that telescope i didn't feel any pain, but maybe i was just distracted as i was standing on a crane platform about 5 floors above the ground, and right after i finished i noticed that my right eye vision got worse, and later that day the pain started. Today i can tell that the pain got weaker, yesterday was the worst, so i'm happy, i hope i will recover from it. Although my right pupil is still bigger , i found out it may be 'Adie syndrome' but i'll be worrying about it later, if it doesn't go away. p.clar...@gmail.com wrote: >the drops you are taking is called Voltaren in the US and many other >countries. it is used to reduce inflammation, and it is known that >deeper penetration of these drops, so as to provide retina-level >therapeutic effects, actually does work. so using the drops seems >appropriate too. thanks for the info, i started reading about these Voltaren eye drops, and found much more useful informations then i found in the instruction provided with my drops, eg proper dosing. http://www.drugs.com/cdi/voltaren-drops.html once again thanks for your replies. regards Tom >So that 16mW laser beam was definitely wider when entering the >telescope and then my eye. But as Dave said, telescope magnified >part of it, but i don't know to what degree, but according to what >i've read it could be increased to hundreds of wats focused to some >small laser spot scribing the retina. At the time i was looking No. The telescope cannot add power to the beam. It can concentrate it or spread it out, but it cannot make the total energy more than 16 milliwatts (or whatever the laser actually put out). Signature- Mike Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail. >>So that 16mW laser beam was definitely wider when entering the >>telescope and then my eye. But as Dave said, telescope magnified [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > it or spread it out, but it cannot make the total energy more than 16 > milliwatts (or whatever the laser actually put out). Here important are the wats per unit area. The scribing take place when the density (concentration) of energy is enough. S* >or just a hail-mary shotgun approach. i'm sure. its just some medicine to give to a concerned patient along with a "medical-sounding" explanation so that they will leave peacefully with a smile on their faces. Tobradex is effective for that two. >Looking through a telescope, however, is another question. It's kind >of counter-intuitive, what a telescope actually does. It makes stars >brighter, because they are so far away that they can't be resolved as >anything but point sources. So all the extra light gathered by a >telescope lens is focused on the same spot. Collimated light from a laser is also effectively a point source, and it can be focused to a diffraction-limited spot, just like starlight. Now, we don't know how well collimated the source was in this case, but if it was designed for long-range transmission with optics at each end of the link, it's probably pretty good. >A laser very far away might appear to be a point source to a >telescope, but lasers are also coherent light. Any lens larger than >the beam width is already collecting all of the light, so it wouldn't >look any brighter through the telescope than to the naked eye. At close range, the collimating optics of a laser transmitter are likely to be larger in diameter than the eye's pupil, so the pupil limits the power that reaches the eye. A telescope could be large enough to intercept much or all of the emitted beam. For example, if your pupil is 3 mm in diameter, and you use a 10X telescope, the effective entrance pupil of the scope will be 30 mm (or the objective lens diameter, whichever is smaller). At a distance, the beam will have spread to be larger than the telescope objective, and the intensity will not change much over that diameter. A 10X telescope could capture 100X as much light from the beam as the naked eye. That's why the warning about looking at lasers through binoculars or a telescope. It really can drastically increase the captured energy. And that energy can be focused to a point - a laser is *not* an area source. The saving factor in this particular case is that the laser was only 16 mW to start with, there are losses in the optics, and the beam has probably spread substantially by the time it reached his position. Even with a telescope, only a small fraction of the laser output entered his eye. Whether there is permanent damage is something a doctor should determine, by actually looking at his retina. Dave On Feb 5, 7:18 am, tomasz...@gmail.com wrote: > Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor , > she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > the pain was gone, but this afternoon it came back even stronger, so > definitely something is hurt. What were the drops she gave you?? Can you provide the name (or, at least, the active ingredient)?? > I don't intend to sue my employer, I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about the injury (very smart and very important) AND about pursuing a Workers Compensation claim. This is NOT the same as a lawsuit. It is designed to provide you with medical, and certain other benefits, in the event of a work related injury. It sounds like this is ver good advice in your case. I hope you're okay. > I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They > ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about > the injury (very smart and very important) AND about pursuing a > Workers Compensation claim. I'm not sure the OP is subject to US employment law. -MT >> I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They >> ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about >> the injury (very smart and very important) AND about pursuing a >> Workers Compensation claim. > >I'm not sure the OP is subject to US employment law. Seeing as he's posting from Poland, and the documents he referred to are from Israel, that's a safe bet. Signature- Mike Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail. On Feb 6, 9:04 am, Mike Ruskai <BUTthann...@DONTearthlinkLIKE.netSPAM> wrote: > >> I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They > >> ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail. Sorry. I was in Yosemite, killing time while my wife napped ;-) > Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor , > she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight. > She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and > not to look into laser in the future. You should see a retinal specialist or at least a general ophthalmologist ASAP. tomasz.kk@gmail.com wrote in news:a0edc898-7f6a-4554-b0e8- efef267ea02e@n20g2000hsh.googlegroups.com: > I don't intend to sue my employer, Workman's comp is not suing your employer. SignatureScott Reverse name to reply |
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