“Like a stack of pancakes.” In the United States, a 70-year-old patient visited her ophthalmologist for eye discomfort and blurred vision. While she was examining her, Katerina Kurteeva, a Californian ophthalmologist, found 23 disposable contact lenses stuck in her eye, reports The Guardian.
The patient had avoided her control appointments because she was afraid of catching Covid-19, her doctor explains. When she finally arrived at the office in early September, the septuagenarian said she felt something in her right eye.
“To this day, she herself does not understand how it happened,” Katerina Kurteeva told a local television channel.
A “not so rare” situation
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, cited by The Guardian, but this is not a record. In 2017, British doctors found 27 contact lenses in the eye of a 67-year-old woman before her cataract operation.
A situation “really not so rare”, explains the spokesman for the academy, Dr. Thomas Steinemann.
Decades of contact lens wear can desensitize your eyes, making you less likely to feel your contact lenses, even when they’re stuck in your eye.
Also, with age, “the upper eyelid socket becomes very deep,” Katerina Kurteeva told ABC7. “In her case, all those contact lenses may have been hidden like a stack of pancakes at the bottom, in the least sensitive part of her eye.”
The ophthalmologist clarified that the patient had already returned to wearing contact lenses despite the doctor’s suggestion that she try to give her sight a break. “She was very lucky in this situation, it doesn’t always end so well,” Katerina Kurteeva concluded.
Source: BFM TV
