Immediately after Monday’s solar eclipse, the number of people searching Google for eye-related injuries jumped while one doctor in New York City says she treated a surge of patients with eye pain.
“I had several patients come in panicking saying ‘I don’t want to go blind,’” Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a New York City-based double board-certified doctor tells Fox News Digital. “I couldn’t believe it, people actually looked at the eclipse without protection.”
Doctors and eye specialists had been warning the public for days not to look directly at the sun, but apparently, some did not heed the advice.
Looking at the sun without protective equipment such as solar eclipse glasses can harm vision and can lead to serious and permanent damage. Nesheiwat says the sun’s rays can burn the retina and damage the macula, the part of the retina at the back of the eye that is responsible for central vision.
“The damage can be irreversible if the retina is severely damaged by looking directly at the without proper eye protection. Some people may have mild symptoms if the exposure to the sun was brief.”
“Symptoms my patients suffered included headaches, blurry vision, and nausea while one of my patients said he was seeing spots. Other symptoms can include a change in color vision,” Nesheiwat added, saying she sent that patient to an eye care specialist, known as an ophthalmologist, for further treatment. “Then it was crazy, we were trying to make appointments for them with the eye specialists and all the eye specialists were booked up within an hour.”
She treated some patients with nausea medicine and eyedrops and recommended they have follow-up appointments with an eye doctor.
Symptoms may appear after a few days, Nesheiwat said, and she urged people to visit a medical doctor to have a full eye examination if this is the case.
