Bottle-cork injury to the eye: a review of 13 cases

To analyze the anatomic and functional consequences of wine-cork injury to the eye in relation to the patient's age and the type of cork and wine.

We retrospectively studied 13 patients, six women and seven men, presenting to our department with bottle-cork injury to the eye between January 1999 and June 2001.

All patients presented with closed-globe injury according to Kuhn et al's classification. All the cases were injured by bottle corks from sparkling wine: white in ten cases and red in three. Mean visual acuity at admission was 20/100 (range, hand motion to 20/20). The most frequent early injury was anterior chamber hyphema (84.6%), followed by corneal injury (62.2%), ocular hypertension (46.1%), lens subluxation (30.8%), traumatic cataract (23.1%), and post-traumatic retinal edema (23.1%). Mean final visual acuity was 20/25; the follow-up ranged from 3 to 29 months, averaging 16.1 months. Late complications were as follows: pupil motility anomalies (38.5%), traumatic cataract (30.8%), iridodialysis (15.4%), traumatic optic neuropathy (7.7%), post-traumatic glaucoma (7.7%), and traumatic maculopathy (15.4%). Surgical treatment was necessary in two cases (15.4%).

Bottle-cork eye injuries account for 10.8% of post-traumatic hospital admissions to our department. Most of them are due to sparkling white wine served at room temperature. There is no correlation between ocular injury and the eye-bottle distance or the type of cork.