The solar eclipse burned a crescent wound on a womans retina. She wasnt wearing proper glasses
Like so many others, 26-year-old Nia Payne wanted to view August’s historic solar eclipse but didn’t have a pair of protective glasses. She walked outside on Staten Island and glanced at the sun — 70 percent was covered — for about six seconds before deciding she needed eye protection.
She borrowed a pair of what looked like eclipse glasses from someone nearby, then looked directly at the sun for 15 to 20 seconds.
They weren’t the right glasses.
For two days after, Payne saw a black spot, shaped like a crescent similar to the eclipse itself, in the center of her vision. Finally, she went to the emergency room and was referred to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, where doctors performed a detailed scan of her retinas.
What they found astonished them and led to a study they published Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology.
The black spot in her vision and the corresponding damage on her retina were mirror images of the eclipse itself. It proved that scientists’ “intuitions were correct” in their theories of how the sun damages the eye, Avnish Deobhakta, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Mount Sinai and co-author of the study, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.
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They asked her to draw the black spot she saw on a piece of paper. It was a crescent that looked a lot like the eclipse itself.
The doctors decided to take a closer look.
Mount Sinai has a precise imaging machine that uses adaptive optics, which can examine individual cells of the retina.
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He said the finding is significant because it might be the first step to discovering a treatment for this sort of injury — which isn’t all that uncommon. While most people instinctively turn away from the sun and solar eclipses are extremely rare, the kind of laser pointers that kids and pet owners often play with can cause similar injuries.
As of now, this sort of damage is irreversible, something Payne knows all too well.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/08/the-solar-eclipse-burned-a-crescent-wound-on-a-womans-retina-she-wasnt-wearing-proper-glasses/?utm_term=.cb2873aea5b8
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Hopefully, for others, this will help scientists and doctors find a cure.
