Epidemiology of Consumer Product-Related Ocular Injuries in the Incarcerated Population

Purpose: To characterize the epidemiology of consumer product-related ocular injury in the United States (US) incarcerated population, and identify preventable causes.

Methods: The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database was queried for cases of eye injury from 2014 to 2023. Incarcerated cases were identified using the keywords "prison", "jail", "inmate", and "incarcerate". Year of injury, diagnosis, product code, and demographic information were gathered and compared between the incarcerated and general US populations using SPSS version 29 (IBM Corp.). A narrative analysis categorized cases of ocular trauma in the incarcerated by common causes of injury.

Results: Between 2014 and 2023, there were an estimated 1,644,841 cases of consumer-product related ocular injury the US, with 2683 cases occurring in the incarcerated. A higher percentage of ocular injury cases in the incarcerated involved African American individuals (43.42% vs. 17.18%), males (92.22% vs 68.54%), alcohol use (4.11% vs. 0.64%), drug use (3.91% vs. 0.82%), and hospitalization (4.96% vs. 1.39%). Contusions were less common in the incarcerated population (27.21% vs. 41.31%), while foreign body injuries were more common (24.38% vs. 18.75%). Penal labor, including cleaning (13.74%), welding (8.25%), yardwork (5.92%), and power grinding (5.72%), accounted for 36.36% of injuries. 26.50% of injuries were sports-related, with basketball involved in 16.82%.

Conclusions: The epidemiology of ocular injury in the incarcerated differs from the general US population. Penal labor and sports-related ocular injury represent a majority of cases, underscoring the need for protective eyewear.