Why is it necessary to rinse eyes for 15 minutes after getting a chemical in? Wouldn’t 1 minute be enough?
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Eye doctor here.
Chemical injuries to the eye are catastrophic.
Irrigating all the chemical out is paramount. It’s not just like washing it off the bench and it’s gone. The chemical starts to be in the tissue, burn the tissue, change the pH of the tissue.
So you need to irrigate until it’s normalised. Then the damage can be addressed.
It depends on the chemical and 15 minutes is not enough for proper chemical injuries. Do it at home for 15 minutes before going to the emergency department where they can continue the irrigation if needed.
The other day I gave orders that ended up being 4 gallons of saline gradually trickled into the eye to irrigate it. I believe it took 5 or 6 hours. But every hour the pH was checked and it was still abnormal. So more irrigation was done until it normalised.
The guy had splashed a solution which literally dissolves bone and skin into his eyes. And he escaped without serious injury because it was irritated properly.
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