Prevalence of injury blindness due to sports activities: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

This study was conducted to systematically review the prevalence of sports-related eye injuries.Methods: the systematic search to find studies addressing the prevalence of sports-related blindness was conducted using "eye, injury, damage, trauma, and sport" as keywords in multiple databases. Medline (PubMed), Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase were searched for articles published between 1990 June and 2019 October. The obtained literature was screened on different levels, considering their titles, abstracts, and full-text retrieval, and the studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included in the review. Quality of the included studies was assessed using the JBI checklist for prevalence studies. The statistical analysis was conducted using CMA v.3.2, and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Finally, 132 studies were included in this review. 27 of them were included in analyzing the prevalence of sports-related blindness, which was 7.2%. 51 studies were included for analyzing the prevalence of sports-related eye injuries, and the obtained value was 9.3%. Also, 29 studies were analyzed to yield the proportion of sports-related eye injuries to total eye injuries, and the obtained value was 6.7%. Moreover, the subgroup analysis was conducted based on the type of injury and type of sports. There were more reported eye injuries in high-danger sports. Some of the prevalence studies reported only one kind of sports-related eye injury, which were analyzed separately. Most studies were related to orbital fractures, and the highest prevalence was for the orbital fractures and CGI group.