In an early November 2025 Physicians Weekly Q&A, Interim Chair and Sterling A. Barrett Distinguished Associate Professor of Ophthalmology David Fleischman, MD, MS, FACS, recapped a retrospective cohort study in which his faculty-mentored team analyzed the correlation between geriatric ocular trauma and risk of mortality. In this study, Dr. Fleischman and co-authors evaluated five-year mortality rates in geriatrics (65+YO) patients who had sustained eye injuries. Over the five-year study period, Dr. Fleischman’s team compared overall mortality and annual mortality rates for study subjects (non-controls) who had experienced ocular trauma with age-matched controls whose medical histories included age-related nuclear cataracts, but no ocular trauma.
The findings of this May 2025 PLOS One study — Geriatric ocular trauma and mortality: A retrospective cohort study — indicate that geriatric patients who have experienced ocular trauma are at a higher risk of mortality than age-matched controls without such injuries. In a Q&A discussion with Physicians Weekly‘s Lisa Tomaszewski, PhD, Dr. Fleischman underscored the importance of close follow-up with higher-risk older patients who have experienced ocular trauma, both to improve patient outcomes and to inform future study aimed at identifying the causes of geriatric periorbital trauma.
** To read a complete transcript of Dr. Fleischman’s November 2025 Q&A with Physicians Weekly, click HERE. **