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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1489445
This article is part of the Research Topic Global Health and Warfare: Assessing the Broad Impacts of Conflict on Public Health View all 7 articles
War-Related Eye Trauma: A Study of Civilian and Military Cases from Ukraine's Ongoing Conflict
Provisionally accepted
Kamil Jonak 1*
Magdalena Matysiak 1
Tomasz Chorągiewicz 2* Dominika Nowakowska 2* Andriy Zimenkovsky 3* Volodymyr Shybinskyi 4*
Sekh Myroslawa 3
Robert Karpiński 5 Arkadiusz Podkowiński 6* Robert Rejdak 2*- 1 Department of Technical Informatics, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland
- 2 Chair and Department of General and Pediatric Ophthalmology, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, Lublin, Poland
- 3 Department of Health care management, pharmacotherapy & clinical pharmacy, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine
- 4 Dental Medical Centre, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine
- 5 Department of Machine Design and Mechatronics, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland
- 6 Da Vinci NeuroClinic, Lublin, Poland
Forecasts indicate a substantial increase in the occurrence of eye injuries in future armed conflicts. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, caused numerous eye injuries among civilians as well as military personnel, generating a serious epidemiological threat related to vision loss. The main goal of this study was to analyze different eye traumas in the Ukrainian population caused by hostilities, which could allow for a relative estimate of the occurrence of long-term consequences for the health care system, such as loss of vision in a large group of citizens. To assess the scale and types of eye injuries, we analyzed around 500 eye images from 470 patients who were selected because they had sustained eye injuries and were treated at a single hospital. The findings reveal that the most prevalent types of injuries were macular disorders, accounting for 49% of cases, retinal vascular changes at 30.2%, and optic nerve disorders at 22.4%. Additionally, we observed different percentages of eye injuries in the military personnel group compared to civilians. These results highlight the significant impact of eye injuries caused by war operations on the health care system. However, further research and collaborative efforts are needed to fully assess the epidemiological burden and to inform the development of effective treatment and prevention strategies.
Keywords: Ophthalmology, war in the Ukraine, Epidemiology, Eye Injuries, Trauma, Eye
Received: 01 Sep 2024; Accepted: 20 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jonak, Matysiak, Chorągiewicz, Nowakowska, Zimenkovsky, Shybinskyi, Myroslawa, Karpiński, Podkowiński and Rejdak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Kamil Jonak, Department of Technical Informatics, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland
Tomasz Chorągiewicz, Chair and Department of General and Pediatric Ophthalmology, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, 20-059, Lublin, Poland
Dominika Nowakowska, Chair and Department of General and Pediatric Ophthalmology, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, 20-059, Lublin, Poland
Andriy Zimenkovsky, Department of Health care management, pharmacotherapy & clinical pharmacy, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, 79010, Ukraine
Volodymyr Shybinskyi, Dental Medical Centre, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, 79010, Ukraine
Arkadiusz Podkowiński, Da Vinci NeuroClinic, Lublin, Poland
Robert Rejdak, Chair and Department of General and Pediatric Ophthalmology, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, 20-059, Lublin, Poland
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