Doctors stunned to find 27 contact lenses in woman’s eye; here’s how it happened

A routine

cataract surgery

turned into a

medical mystery

when doctors discovered an astonishing

27 contact lenses

trapped under a woman’s eyelid, reports Live Science. The 67-year-old UK woman, who had worn

monthly disposable lenses

for 35 years without regular eye check-ups, had experienced minor

eye discomfort

but had no major issues with her vision.
This is especially peculiar because failing to remove

contact lenses

from eyes can lead to serious infections. However, in this case the patient didn’t report any major issues with her vision or excessive eye irritation pointing towards this anomaly.
Had it not been for the routine cataract surgery on her right eye, the 27 contact lenses would have remained undetected, potentially causing trouble in the eyes of the patient at some point of time.

Besides a poorer vision in the right eye compared to the left, the patient had “no previous

ocular complaints

,” as per the Live Science report. The lady reported minor eye discomfort before the procedure, and assumed it could be due to dry eye and old age.
However, just when the doctors were administering an anesthetic into the woman’s eye, they noticed a large, bluish mass under her upper eyelid, which upon examination turned out to be a clump of 17 disposable contact lenses bound together by mucus. 10 more lenses were recovered when the eye was closely examined under a microscope.

After all the contact lenses were removed, the cataract surgery was postponed for two weeks due to the potential bacterial buildup in her eye that could have caused an infection, said the report.

What went wrong?

While it wasn’t clear how so many contact lenses ended up under the patient’s eyelid, the woman reportedly said she sometimes couldn’t find the lens in her right eye while attempting to remove it and assumed she had dropped it somewhere.
The patient was wearing monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years. These contact lenses can be worn for about 30 days but are intended to be removed before bed each night.

The woman’s doctors, who published a report of the case in the journal The BMJ, suspected that her “deep set eyes” may have made her more prone to retaining such a large number of lenses.
The doctors also highlighted the importance of properly monitoring contact users to ensure they’re using the lenses correctly. The authors suggested that clinicians can flip over a patient’s eyelids and apply a

fluorescein stain

— a fluorescent dye that changes colour when seen under a special light to help reveal contact lenses hiding in and around the eye.
(Picture courtesy: iStock)