Hyphaema

Hyphema is a collection of blood in the anterior chamber of the eye, located between the cornea and iris.

With hyphema, bleeding occurs into the anterior chamber of the eye from damaged vessels of the iris, ciliary body or other structures of the eye. Blood accumulates in the lower part of the anterior chamber in the form of a hypopyon (a collection of blood in the shape of a crescent).

The most common cause of hyphema is injury to the eye, such as blow to the eye with a blunt object. Other causes include eye surgery, inflammatory eye diseases, and increased intraocular pressure.

Symptoms of hyphema are redness of the eye, pain, decreased vision, and the presence of blood in the anterior chamber. For diagnosis, an eye examination is performed using a slit lamp.

Treatment includes the use of eye drops that reduce intraocular pressure and anti-inflammatory drugs. Sometimes surgery is required to remove the accumulated blood. The prognosis depends on the severity of the injury and the timeliness of treatment. Untreated hyphema can lead to the development of secondary glaucoma and vision loss.

Hyphemia is often one of the symptoms of severe inflammatory diseases of the eyeball or surgical damage to the eye, less often - transient conditions. Normally, a small amount of blood may accumulate in front of the iris, this hemorrhage is called hyphaemia: this phenomenon usually occurs due to superficial damage from eye trauma or intraocular lens use and involves a slight thickening of blood near the iris, which is caused by increased blood viscosity. As for the large hyphema, which turns out to be quite heavy for the eye, there is a system of intraocular bloody masses in the anterior part of the eye. If this bleeding occurs suddenly, without any traumatic factors from the internal environment of the eye, a severe disease of the eyeball (infectious or viral origin, systemic inflammatory disease), vascular inflammation of the fundus or tumor should be assumed. The color of the hyphema depends on the reasons that caused it. All this variety of colors is characteristic not only of eye pathology. Thus, they reflect the accumulation of some