Corneal abrasions are the most common eye injury.
Objects with more momentum and sharpness can lacerate eyes or eyelids and create open wounds. Traumatic encounters with blunt objects can fracture the orbital floor, the thin bone beneath the eye. Serious blows to the head can injure cranial nerves, which control eye movements, or the optic nerve, which is essential to vision. The study population included all soldiers who served in the active component of the US Army between October 1992 and December 1998. Table 1 lists the 53 eye injury diagnoses of interest, estimated ranges of recovery periods, and numbers of incident eye injury hospitalizations and ambulatory visits.