Flare Pen-Gun Ocular, Orbital, and Cerebral Injury

Abstract

On the evening of July 12, 1969, a 27-year-old man mistook a tear gas pen gun (Fig. 1), kept at his father's bedside as a protection device, for a flashlight. Attempting to light the instrument he pointed it to his face and released the trigger. He was thrown to the floor by the force of the explo­ sion, and a witness described a flame from the man's face flashing across the room to light the bedspread afire. On admission, the patient was disoriented. There were multiple burns over the right side of his face and forehead. His left eye appeared uninjured, but he had no light perception in his right eye and it showed moderate chemosis with marked limitation of all extraocular movements. There was complete anesthesia over the area of the first division of the fifth cranial nerve, and right ptosis. Only a red re­ flex could be seen with the ophthalmoscope. The most striking finding was a 10-mm hole filled with blood in the upper nasal aspect of the orbit (Fig. 2). X-ray films revealed a rectangular, dense, for­ eign body within the right orbit, which was inter­ preted as wadding from the missle. Tomograms