Doctors Discover 27 Contact Lenses in Woman's Eye
Doctors in England recently removed 27 contact lenses from a woman's eye, according to a new case report.
The 67-year-old woman was about to have cataract surgery, when doctors noticed a "blueish foreign body" under her upper eyelid, according to the report of the woman's case, published July 5 in the journal The BMJ.
It turned out that the mass contained 17 contact lenses, and doctors later found 10 more lenses in the same eye.
The woman had worn disposable monthly lenses for 35 years, but was "shocked" by the surgeons' discovery, Dr. Rupal Morjaria, an ophthalmologist at Solihull Hospital in England who treated the woman, told Optometry Today. At the time, the woman told the surgeons that she thought her eye discomfort was due to dry eye and old age.
Morjaria said that neither she nor any of the other doctors involved in the case had seen such a case before.
The woman had "deep set eyes," which might have contributed to the "unusually large number of retained foreign bodies," according to the case report.
The woman's surgery was postponed, because the clump of contact lenses would have led to a large amount of bacteria in the eye, Morjaria said.
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Originally published on Live Science.