Your patient presents with an ocular burn after accidentally splashing an industrial acid on his face. You, however, can not seem to find the ever elusive eye pH paper to track her initial and serial pH’s during copious ocular irrigation. Now what?

Trick of the Trade:

Use a urine dipstick reagent strip to check eye pH

Cut the dipstick strip so that pH is the last box. Gently touch the strip to the patient’s eye.

Caution

Be careful of the sharp edges on the trimmed dipstick strip when touching the patient’s eye.

Note that a urine dipstick can only detect a pH range of 5-8.5. Anything outside these ranges will require the eye pH paper, which can detect a range of 1-14.

References

Although no literature could be found on this in PubMed, it seems to be a fairly accepted practice:

Credit for the trick goes to Dr. Eugene Izsak (Director Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Promedica Toledo Children’s Hospital; Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, University of Toledo College of Medicine)