NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eye injuries amid female lacrosse players dropped dramatically in the pattern of US Lacrosse, the governing board in the place of the sport, required protective eyewear in 2004, according to a unused study.

"I am impressed, but not surprised," before-mentioned Dr. Stuart Dankner, a pediatric ophthalmologist who sits steady the eye safety committee of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Dankner, who was not involved in the of recent origin study, said that eye protection has reduced injuries in hockey, baseball and other sports.

"It's correct a shame that it took with equal rea~n long" to become mandated for women's lacrosse, he added.

Men's lacrosse, that is considered a collision sport, introduced sight gear before the women's brave, which is a non-contact ridicule.

Dankner told Reuters Health that he has treated cases of cruel eye injury among girls who played lacrosse, each from getting smacked with the stab, colliding with another player, or acquisition hit with the ball.

In 2005, from urgings from the American Academy of Ophthalmology and other groups, US Lacrosse required that girls and women carry eye protection.

The new study, funded ~ means of US Lacrosse, tracked eye injuries mixed 25 high school girls lacrosse teams because four years before the mandate and six years in the rear of the mandate.

From 2000 to 2003, in that place were 22 eye injuries, and from 2004 to 2009 in that place were just five. That corresponds to the same injury per player per 10,000 practices and games against 1.6 per 100,000.

Four of the five injuries that occurred in the rear of the eyewear requirement happened while the girls were not wearing the protective gear. The fifth injury involved view inflammation.

"As long as the athletes are wearing it seems to be doing what we hope it would," afore~ lead author Andrew Lincoln, the counsellor of sports medicine research at MedStar Health Research Institute in Baltimore.

Other injuries to the semblance and head also went down, from 33 near the front of the mandate to 21 after.

"We were very pleased to see that," Lincoln told Reuters Health. "There was disturb there would be more aggressive operate and more injuries (because of the defensive gear), and that turned out not to subsist the case."

Concussions, however, increased, from 38 previous to the mandate to 86 after.

Lincoln said he doesn't think that's because of rougher play, but rather because of a greater awareness across the whole of sports of the symptoms of clash.

"The comparison periods that we're looking at coincide with this dramatic increase in the recollection of the signs and symptoms of shock," he said.

Dr. Ferenc Kuhn, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who furthermore sits on the Academy's Eye Safety Committee, agreed that sheltering eyewear is unlikely to increase the expose to danger of concussion.

"I have never encountered or heard of deportment change in athletes or in the inexact population just because one part of the visible form has a reduced risk of damage due to protection," Kuhn wrote in each email to Reuters Health.

He added that the manner of writing of the eye gear should not obscure players' vision, causing them to reach errors.

Dankner said he'd like to inquire women's lacrosse also require players to cause to disappear helmets.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/vrtUoS The American Journal of Sports Medicine, online December 8, 2011.

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