Abstract

As eye balls are in front of the body and are exposed for most of the time, they are quite likely to get injured. Sport includes all types of sporting events as well as games. Such injuries are more prone to occur in children and young persons who are most frequently involved in sports and games. In a study of 1744 eyes involved in ocular trauma, 214 were due to sports injury (12.27%). As would be expected such injuries were more in males (82.5%) than in females (17.5%). The maximum incidence was found in children between 1-10 years (42.26%) followed by children between 11-20 years (35.51%). There was a sharp decline after 20yrs. (10.75%). India is a peculiar country where there are two very different patterns of life styles-rural and urban. Although the rural population is more than double, the sports trauma is much higher in urban population (almost double). One reason for this anomaly may be the type of game. In rural areas usually children play with larger balls like, football or volley ball which are likely to cause less damage. Earlier two games, bow and arrow and gilli-danda were popular causing severe injury. However, they are not very common now and cricket has become popular. In urban areas games like hockey, cricket and golf are more common. These small harder balls cause more severe injuries. It is expected that the difference in sex ratio will decrease as women are participating in all types of sports.