Horrified Surgeons Discover 27 Contact Lenses in Woman’s Eye ........................
Horrified Surgeons Discover 27 Contact Lenses in Woman’s Eye
George Dvorsky
7/17/17 10:33am Filed to: OPTOMETRY
While prepping a 67-year-old female patient for routine cataract surgery at England’s Solihull Hospital, physicians noticed a strange bluish blob in one of her eyes. On closer look, the blob turned out to be 17 contact lenses stuck together. Another 10 lenses were subsequently discovered in the same eye. The surgeons have never seen anything quite like it.
As reported in the British Medical Journal, the unnamed patient was unaware that the contact lenses were missing. Incredibly, the 27 lost lenses, which had drifted behind her upper eyelid, weren’t causing her any serious distress. She figured her dry eyes and periodic discomfort were just a product of old age.
“None of us have ever seen this before,” noted surgeon Rupal Marjaria, who filed the BMJ report, in Optometry Today. “It was such a large mass. All the 17 contact lenses were stuck together. We were really surprised that the patient didn’t notice it because it would cause quite a lot of irritation while it was sitting there.”
The Solihull Hospital surgical team decided to postpone the cataract surgery due to the increased risk of endophthalmitis—inflammation of the inner eye. This condition can lead to vision loss and even loss of the eye itself, and is a rare complication of cataract surgeries. The surgeons were concerned that a build-up of bacteria in the clump might trigger it.The patient had been using monthly disposable contact lenses for about 35 years, but hadn’t visited her optometrist in quite some time. What’s more, she didn’t mention any symptoms during her pre-operative assessment. Marjaria thought it important to write a case report about the incident, showing that it’s possible for a person to retain lots of contact lenses without experiencing too much discomfort.
“She was quite shocked,” Morjaria told Optometry Today. “When she was seen two weeks after I removed the lenses she said her eyes felt a lot more comfortable. She thought her previous discomfort was just part of old age and dry eye.”
This case is obviously extreme; most people experience significant discomfort and redness, as well as an increased risk for infections, when contacts get stuck in their eyes. It’s not immediately obvious why this patient was so asymptomatic, but it may have had something to do with her “deep set eyes,” according to the BMJ report.
Wearers of contact lenses know how frustrating and unsettling it can be to displace a lens. Here’s how you get a contact lens out from the top ofyour eye, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology:
See all of it:
https://gizmodo.com/horrified-surgeo...man-1796979194
