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2607: How to evacuate a hyphema

An instructional image on how to evacuate a hyphema, showing the procedure at a slit lamp microscope and in the operating room with annotations highlighting 'Dense clotted hyphema.'

We have all seen cases of hyphema, bleeding in the anterior chamber of the eye, due to trauma. In many cases, if the hyphema is small (usually described in terms of a percent of the AC), we can let it resolve with time. The anterior chamber turns over about 1% per minute, so in less than 2 hours there is a complete turn-over. For a small hyphema, it should resolve in a few days to perhaps a couple of weeks. However for a large hyphema with dense clots of blood, there may not be sufficient resolution without an invasive procedure. We can take the patient back to the operating room and completely clear it out or we can also mostly remove the blood at the slit lamp microscope in our clinic. This video covers both techniques which I’m sure you will find useful.

video link here

https://youtu.be/2styBxR7ZJw

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