A peculiar case of a retained inert piece of fireworks as an intraocular foreign body in the anterior chamber

This is a descriptive case report of a seven-year-old boy presented in January 2007 with decreased vision in the right eye, for 2 months after sustaining a trauma while he was playing with fireworks during the Eid holiday. He was treated in a suburban hospital for corneal laceration and was prescribed a topical antibiotic and a topical steroid. When the child presented to us, a slit lamp examination revealed a thread in the anterior chamber, his un-aided visual acuity was 6/60 on a Snellen chart. Surgery to remove the foreign body was scheduled, but the patient never attended. The patient was lost to follow-up and returned in January 2011 with an un-aided visual acuity of 6/12, although the foreign body was retained in the anterior chamber (AC) with a quiet eye and good vision. At that time, we decided to follow the patient without any surgical intervention. Again, the patient was lost to followup and returned with almost full vision in September 2012, with a visual acuity of 6/6 without correction. Thus, we concluded that thread like IOFBs in the AC can be considered inert materials that may not need any surgical intervention in a quiet eye that does not show any signs of inflammation and where the IOFB is non-mobile and located away from the endothelium.