In a bizarre medical surgery, Doctors removed a whopping 27 Contact Lenses from a woman’s eye. Doctors found a "bluish foreign body" in an English woman’s eye, which turned out to be a mass of contact lenses. The doctors chanced on the same when the medical staff was prepping the woman to undergo a routine cataract surgery. These 27 lenses were pulled out from the 67-year old woman’s eyes later, in a different operation.
27 contact lenses removed
Specialist trainee ophthalmologist, Rupal Morjaria told Optometry Today that the patient was unaware of her condition and told the doctors that she experienced discomfort in her eyes and blamed it on dry eye and old age.
She was also unaware of her missing contact lenses. The first 17 contact lenses were removed in a cataract surgery, while the remaining ten were pulled out in a separate surgery at Solihull Hospital.
Morjaria shared that she along with the other fellow doctors were surprised by this discovery as none of them had seen such a case. She explained that all the 17 contact lenses removed in the first surgery had stuck together in the patient's eyes. However, the doctors were surprised that such a build inside the eye, which is one of the most sensitive parts of the body, went unnoticed as it would have caused plenty of problems for the patient.
The surgery was delayed after the contact lenses were uncovered due to increased risk of endophthalmitis.
Morjaria explained that the doctors postponed the surgery as the lenses were sitting in the eye for an unknown duration of time and if they went ahead with the operation, there would have been possibly plenty of bacteria near the woman’s conjunctiva.
The patient has been wearing disposable lenses for the past 35 years. However, she did not go for regular optometrist appointments.
Despite having such a large mass of lenses in her eyes, the woman did not report of any uneasiness, which is usually noted when lenses go missing in the eye during the pre-operative assessment
Surgery reported publicly to create awareness
The bizarre case took place in November 2016 and was publicly reported for the first time in publication BMJ.
Morjaria stated that the case was made public to aware the doctors that retention of these many lenses in the eye is possible. It was also reported to spread public awareness so that the people go for a regular appointment with their optometrist and give their eye health a priority.
