Doctor removed 27 contact lenses from woman's eye

According to the Miami Herald on Saturday, July 15, a 67-year-old woman went to the doctor for what she thought would be a routine cataract surgery. What happened next made international headlines. The ophthalmologist discovered 27 separate Contact Lenses in one of the British woman's eyes. People are wondering why they were there and why the woman didn't realize it.

Bizarre medical case

The British Medical Journal published this case in its July 5 issue. The ophthalmologist who extracted the stack of contacts also spoke to the media and gave his opinion about the case.

The procedure happened back in November 2016, but it is one that still makes people cringe at the thought of that many contact lenses in a person's eye.

Surgery

As soon as the surgery began, the team of doctors realized something was wrong. According to Optometry Today, the main physician extracted 17 lenses that were all stuck together. The doctors thought that was all in the woman's eye, but to their surprise, there was another mass of 10 more. In case your math is not up to par, that's 27 contacts lenses, which were 26 more than should have been there at one time. The doctors admitted that they had never had a case like that before. The only way they could describe the case was "bizarre."

What was also strange to the doctors was that the patient didn't realize she was putting contact lenses on top of one another without taking the previous one out.

The woman said she had been wearing disposable lenses for 35 years and she did not go for regular eye check-ups. She had no idea that she had that many contacts in her eye. She chalked up her eye discomfort to having dry eyes as a result of her old age.

The doctor did not say why the lenses were in only one eye. However, people are known to need contacts for only one eye.

Perhaps that was the case with this woman. After they were removed, the woman said her eye felt so much better and she was able to see clearer than she had been able to see in a very long time.

Even after the removal, there were still a lot of questions that were not answered. For instance, how long the woman had been trying to see through 27 contacts.

It is a wonder the woman didn't have an infection after having more than one in her eye.

Advice for contact wearers

Most wearers of contacts know that even if they are disposable, they should be removed and cleaned at least once a week. They are to be kept out overnight to allow the eye to rest and get oxygen.

Hopefully the ophthalmologist gave the woman a lesson about eye safety before he sent her home. He might also have suggested that she wear eyeglasses from now on.