This year, we hope you enjoy a fun and safe Fourth of July with friends and family. While fireworks are a beautiful and time-honored tradition associated with the holiday, it’s important that you take precautions to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that there are 9,000 fireworks-related injuries each year in the U.S. Thirty percent of those are eye injuries, and one-fourth of those eye injuries result in blindness. What’s more, children account for the majority of fireworks-injury victims, and for children under 5, sparklers — which burn at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can cause third-degree burns — account for one-third of fireworks-related injuries.
For these reasons, the American Academy of Ophthalmology encourages you to follow these recommendations:
Never let children play with fireworks of any type.
View fireworks from a safe distance: at least 500 feet away, or up to a quarter of a mile for best viewing.
Leave the lighting of fireworks to trained professionals.
Follow directives given by event ushers and public safety personnel.
Respect safety barriers set up to allow pyrotechnicians to do their jobs safely.
If you find unexploded fireworks remains, do not touch them. Immediately contact your local fire or police department.
If you get an eye injury from fireworks, seek medical help immediately.
If you do decide to shoot off fireworks yourself, be sure to follow all safety precautions, protect your eyes, and keep children a safe distance away. The staff at Saving Sight wishes you a safe and fun-filled Independence Day weekend
New technology allows Saving Sight to stay on the cutting edge as an innovative eye bank. Saving Sight recently upgraded our lab equipment to a new optical coherence tomography (OCT) microscope. It also allows us to be better stewards of the gift of sight while delivering the highest quality to our partner surgeons.
“The OCT is a big microscope that measures the thickness of the cornea, and we use it to measure our corneas before we start processing for our DSAEK or ALK processing. We also take images after processing so the surgeon can see what the processed tissue actually looks like. It gives us more insight on the quality of the tissue and if it will be suitable for the surgery type we are offering it for. We can be proactive in what we offer to the surgeons,” says Debora Van Klinken-Muntz, Lead Laboratory Technician.
“Using it as an eye bank saves us a lot of time. It also lets us be good stewards of the tissue we receive. I don’t know how we could do eye banking without an OCT machine.”
Saving Sight continues to partner with KidSight, a Missouri-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides free vision screenings for children. At our June 2021 board meeting, the Saving Sight board voted to donate $35,000 to KidSight to support their work. This brings the total amount Saving Sight has donated to KidSight during the 2020-2021 fiscal year to $65,000.
As an organization with a mission to change lives by saving sight, supporting organizations like KidSight with a similar mission is vital.
The KidSight program was founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1995 as a part of Saving Sight with a handful of volunteers screening a few hundred children a year. Today, KidSight’s program has grown to screen the vision of more than 67,000 kids throughout Missouri each year with the help of trained staff and volunteers operating across the state. Using a photoscreening device, they quickly and noninvasively screen children ages 6 months to 6 years for common causes of childhood vision loss. KidSight then refers at-risk children to eye doctors for examination, necessary treatment and follow-up to ensure kids get the care they need. KidSight has held its own 501(c)(3) status since August 2016. You can learn more or make a donation to KidSight at www.kid-sight.org.
Wichita, Kan. (June 1, 2021) – Two Kansas-based eye banks have partnered, increasing their impact to save sight in communities throughout the state and beyond. As of June 1, Saving Sight and the Kansas Eye Bank & Cornea Research Center, Inc. have integrated operations and now operate a Wichita location as Kansas Eye Bank, a division of Saving Sight.
This partnership brings together two nonprofit organizations with a rich history of serving the community, ocular transplant physicians, vision researchers, and area hospitals. The two organizations have a shared mission to restore vision to individuals needing a corneal transplant while also fulfilling the wishes of Kansans to become eye tissue donors upon passing.
“We’re excited about what this new partnership means in providing sight to even more people across Kansas, the Midwest, and beyond,” said Tony Bavuso, CEO of Saving Sight.
Saving Sight provides donated corneal tissue for transplant, restoring sight to approximately 8 individuals each day. The addition of the Kansas Eye Bank’s Wichita facility to the Saving Sight system will add new donor hospitals to its network, setting the stage to increase the number of tissues the nonprofit provides to physicians for transplantation. Additionally, the new partnership will allow Saving Sight to expand its efforts in supporting the choice of eye donors and their families to leave a legacy through eye tissue donation.
Saving Sight currently operates four other facilities apart from its headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., including locations in St. Louis, Columbia, Mo., Springfield, Mo., and Springfield, Ill.
About Saving Sight
Saving Sight is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to change lives by saving sight. Founded in 1960, Saving Sight has grown to become one of the nation’s leading eye banks and is focused on providing innovative solutions to its clinical partners. Headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., Saving Sight facilitates eye donation in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois, impacting the lives of those both near and far through transplantation.
Learn how we changed lives by saving sight during an unprecedented year.
Our Community Impact in 2020
For so many around the world and in the U.S., 2020 put the human spirit and resilience to the test. As part of our nation’s healthcare system and partner with hundreds of donor hospitals, Saving Sight was called to rise up to the need of helping others during this challenging and unprecedented time. As result of our hard work and care for our community, we were able to provide a huge impact in quality of life for others by facilitating the gift of restored vision.
Read more in our 2020 Impact Report below about the stories of those we were able to help last year.
Joseph Tauber, MD, presented on the use of serum tears in March
On Wednesday, March 3, ophthalmologist and Saving Sight Medical Director, Joseph Tauber, MD, presented on using serum tears therapy in ocular surface disease. The webinar was hosted by Vital Tears, an organization that offers autologous serum tears to eye care professionals and their patients throughout the nation. Saving Sight is a co-founder of Vital Tears, and processes all orders for the serum tears in its laboratory.
Dr. Tauber has an in-depth understanding of the use of serum tears in patients with ocular surface disease, as he was an early adopter of using Vital Tears in his practice. During the webinar Dr. Tauber shared insights into how serum tears fit into a treatment plan for dry eye disease, as well how Vital Tears has simplified the process for patients and physicians.
In addition to serving as Saving Sight’s medical director, Dr. Tauber is a recognized authority in the field of ocular surface diseases, including dry eye. Avidly involved in research for almost three decades, Dr. Tauber has been a principal investigator in over 125 research studies of high-risk corneal transplantation, inflammation and allergic eye diseases, corneal infectious diseases and numerous studies related to dry eye syndrome.
If you’re interested in learning more about the innovative approach that Vital Tears is taking in partnership with Saving Sight to restore sight, visit www.vitaltears.org.
Saving Sight continues to partner with 
This year, we hope you enjoy a fun and safe Fourth of July with friends and family. While fireworks are a beautiful and time-honored tradition associated with the holiday, it’s important that you take precautions to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.