The shuttlecock and your child's eye
Badminton is the sport most Malaysian children play first, and the one nobody thinks of as dangerous. Here is what a shuttlecock does to an eye, and what to do in the hour after it happens.
- Any hit to the eye from a shuttlecock needs same-day assessment, even when the eye looks completely normal afterwards.
- In a review of 378 badminton eye injuries, the shuttlecock caused 85 per cent of them and the wall of the eye stayed intact in 97 per cent, which is exactly the kind of injury that hides.
- Blood pooling in the front of the eye, a hyphaema, is the commonest finding after a shuttlecock hit and is an emergency the same evening.
- No aspirin and no ibuprofen after a blunt eye injury, because both make bleeding inside the eye worse.
- Ordinary spectacles are not eye protection and can shatter. Polycarbonate sports eyewear is, and matters most for spectacle wearers and for a child who sees well with only one eye.
Badminton is the sport most Malaysian children play first. A court in the car park, a net across the corridor at the flats, doubles at the community hall on a Sunday. It is also, in a way that catches parents completely off guard, a sport that sends children to my colleagues in the eye emergency department.
The reason is geometry, not carelessness. A shuttlecock is the one piece of sporting equipment small enough to fit inside the eye socket. A football, a basketball, even a tennis ball is stopped by the bones of the brow and cheek. A shuttlecock goes past them and lands on the eye itself, at speed, cork end first.
He was hit in the eye and it looks fine. Do we still go?
Yes, the same day. This is the single most useful sentence in this article, because the eye that looks fine in the car park is the one that gets brought in three days later with a problem that was there from the first minute. A closed eye injury, one where the wall of the eye is not cut open, is exactly the kind that hides.
What you cannot see from outside is what the impact did inside the eye: bleeding in the front chamber, bruising of the retina, a tear in the drainage channels, a lens knocked out of position. Your child cannot reliably tell you either, because a child with one good eye covering for the other will say they see fine, and mean it. Someone needs to check the vision in each eye separately, measure the pressure inside the eye and look right into the back of it.
How can something that light do real damage?
Because it is small, hard at one end, and moving fast by the time it reaches a face. In a systematic review that gathered 378 badminton eye injuries from nineteen studies across twelve countries, a shuttlecock caused 85 per cent of them, and the wall of the eye stayed intact in 97 per cent. In other words, almost all of it is blunt injury from the shuttle itself.
The same review found what makes it more likely: doubles play, the shuttlecock rather than the racquet, and no eye protection. Doubles is worth pausing on. Your child spends the game with a partner behind or beside them, both of them watching the shuttle rather than each other, and one of them swinging hard at something the other cannot see coming.
One Malaysian hospital's own records tell the same story from closer to home. Over fifteen years, that eye department treated 23 patients for badminton eye injuries. Every single injury was a shuttlecock hit. Most came from the opponent across the net, a smaller number from the partner on the same side, and one from a bystander who was not even playing. Ages ran from six to fifty six, and the injuries clustered in players aged twenty and under. That is one hospital's list, not a national picture, but the pattern in it is the pattern I recognise.
There is blood inside the front of his eye. Is that an emergency?
Yes. Go now, tonight, not tomorrow morning. What you are looking at is called a hyphaema, blood collecting between the clear front window of the eye and the coloured iris. In that Malaysian hospital's records it was the commonest thing found after a shuttlecock hit, and it is the injury I most want parents to be able to name.
It is often visible without any equipment: a red level sitting in the bottom of the front of the eye, sometimes a thin line, sometimes filling half of it. It usually comes with pain, blurring and light that hurts. It is not the same as a red patch in the white of the eye, which is common and usually harmless. Blood inside the front chamber needs an eye doctor the same day.
What do I do in the first hour after a hit?
Very little, and that is deliberate. The instinct to fix something is strong and almost every instinctive move makes a blunt eye injury worse.
- Do not press on the eye, and do not rub it. Do not let your child rub it either.
- Do not put anything in the eye. No drops, no water, no breast milk, no herbs.
- Keep your child upright, head higher than the feet, and calm rather than crying hard.
- No aspirin and no ibuprofen. Both make bleeding inside the eye worse. If you are unsure what is in the packet at home, bring the packet and ask at the hospital rather than guessing.
- Go to an eye emergency department, or a hospital emergency department that can call one.
If the eye has been cut rather than struck, or you can see something stuck in it, the rules are different again and stricter: shield it loosely, touch nothing, and go. The first minute after a firework or sparkler injury works through that distinction in more detail, and it is the same distinction here.
The eye looked better after a few days. Why does he still need the follow up?
Because the injuries that take sight away later are the quiet ones. When something blunt hits the eye, the fluid inside is driven sideways and can tear the drainage channels at the edge of the iris. That damage does not hurt and does not show. Months or years afterwards, the pressure inside the eye can start to climb and damage the optic nerve, which is glaucoma.
This is not theoretical. In that same Malaysian audit, damage to the drainage angle was found in seventeen of the twenty three injured eyes, some of it as early as one week after the injury. The average pressure in those eyes was already raised when the patients first arrived. Blood in the front of the eye can also block the drainage on its own and push the pressure up in the first days, and it can bleed again while it is healing, which is why rest and a shield are part of the treatment and not a suggestion.
So the follow up appointments are the treatment. A child discharged after a shuttlecock injury should come back for every check they were given, and should have the eye pressure looked at from time to time for years, even when everything looks and feels normal.
Do his normal glasses protect him on court?
No, and in one respect they add a risk of their own. Ordinary spectacles are made to hold a lens in front of an eye, not to stop an impact. In the Malaysian records, almost everyone injured was wearing no eye protection at all, and a more recent case series from another centre includes a player whose eye was cut open by his own shattered spectacles.
What does protect is purpose made sports eyewear with polycarbonate lenses, the wraparound kind sold for racquet sports, worn over or instead of the usual glasses. If your child wears glasses and plays badminton regularly, that is the pair to ask the optical shop about, and prescription versions exist. It is the same argument as a helmet on a bicycle: nobody enjoys the extra thing on their face, and nobody regrets it afterwards.
One group should never play without protection. A child who already sees poorly out of one eye, whether from a lazy eye or any other cause, is doing all their seeing with the other one. For that child, eye protection during racquet sports is not optional, and it is worth knowing which category your child falls into before the next tournament rather than after it.
Is badminton too risky for my child?
No. I am not asking any family to give up the sport, and I would not say this if the risk could not be reduced so cheaply. The two things the evidence points at, the shuttle and the missing eye protection, are both addressable, and one of them costs about as much as a decent racquet grip.
What I would ask is that badminton stops being the sport nobody thinks of as dangerous. Eye protection for regular players, especially spectacle wearers and children. A rule in doubles that nobody swings blind. And the thing that changes outcomes most, which is going the same day the eye is hit rather than waiting to see how it looks in the morning. The other ordinary hazards are in the accidents that reach my clinic from ordinary houses, and one principle runs through all of it: the skull protects the eye well against big things and badly against small fast ones.
- You can see blood sitting inside the front of the eye, behind the clear window.
- Your child's vision in that eye is blurred, dim or different from before, even slightly.
- There is ongoing pain in the eye, or bright light hurts it.
- The pupil looks an odd shape or a different size from the other one.
- The eye has been cut, or something looks stuck in it. Shield it loosely, put nothing in it and go.
Common questions
He got hit in the eye with a shuttlecock and it looks fine. Do we still go?
There is blood inside the front of his eye. Is that an emergency?
Can I give her paracetamol or ibuprofen for the pain?
How long does he have to rest?
Do his normal glasses protect him on court?
Is badminton too risky for a child?
The eye looked better after a week. Why does he still need the follow up?
- AAPOS · Hyphema · aapos.org
- Badminton-related eye injuries: a systematic review, Injury Prevention 2023 · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Clinical audit on badminton-related ocular injuries in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia, Cureus 2022 · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Hazards of Malaysia's favorite sport: a case series of badminton-related ocular injuries at a single tertiary center, Cureus 2026 · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- American Academy of Ophthalmology · Eye injuries: first aid · www.aao.org