Metallic Corneal Foreign Body With Rust Ring
May 1st 2007Two days after "heading" a soccer ball, a 17-year-old boy presented to the emergency department with progressive pain and a foreign-body sensation in his left eye. Visual acuity was 20/20 in the right eye and 20/25 in the left eye. The pupils were equally round and reactive; full extraocular movements of both eyes were noted. The left eye had conjunctival injection and a 1-mm foreign body on the medial cornea with a surrounding halo of discoloration--typical of a metallic corneal foreign body. A Seidel test (which demonstrates streaming of fluorescein dye from the aqueous humor when illuminated with UV light) revealed no evidence of corneal perforation; there were noareas of fluorescein dye uptake.