We investigated the clinical characteristics of ocular trauma in the military for prevention and treatment application.

We retrospectively surveyed epidemiologic characteristics by investigating the medical records of 790 patients who were hospitalized in the Armed Forces Capital Hospital from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2010 and investigated the prognostic factors that influenced visual outcome.

Among the 790 patients with ocular trauma, 22.9% of the patients had an open injury and 77.1% had a closed injury. The most common cause of injury was sports-related ocular trauma (39%) and fatigue duty-related trauma (23.4%). The following 8 risk factors were considered poor prognostic factors: open injury, involved posterior segment, operation, initial visual acuity of 0.1 or less, corneal laceration, hyphema, RD, and intraocular foreign body. There was a significant correlation between the probability of poor visual outcome and the number of risk factors (correlation coefficient = -0.468, p < 0.0001).

In the present study, the cause, characteristics and prognostic factor of military personnel's ocular injury were determined. The results can be useful in the prevention and management of ocular injury in the military.