Doctors find 27 contact lenses in woman's eye

It wasn't old age, or disease: A "bluish foreign body" that was found in an English woman's eye turned out to be a mass of contact lenses, surprising medical staff who were preparing the woman, 65, for routine cataract surgery.

The lenses were discovered in two clumps, Rupal Morjaria, a specialist trainee of ophthalmology, told Optometry Today. According to the publication, she wore daily disposable lenses for 35 years.

She said: "None of us have ever seen this before".

She said: "It was such a large mass". All of the 17 contact lenses were stuck together.

According to Dr. Morjaria, given the fact that they didn't know for how long had the lenses been there, if they continued the surgery then the patient would have had a lot of bacteria in her conjunctiva, increasing the risks of endophthalmitis, which is a bad inflammation of the eye.

"Because she had harboured these contact lenses in her eye for an unknown length of time, if we had operated, she would have had a lot of bacteria around her conjunctiva", explained Morjaria.

It does bear mentioning, however, that the case took place in November 2016, but had only been publicized in recent days, after doctors published their findings in the British Medical Journal earlier this week, some eight months after the discovery.

The doctor says the case highlights how important it is to monitor people with contact lenses. She had not reported specific symptoms before being taken in charge for its operation. Apparently, the 67-year-old patient hadn't noticed. As well, she said that she didn't attend to regular optometrist appointments.

Luckily for the woman, she appears to have been relatively unharmed by the contact lenses and says her eyes feel a lot better now they are out. Contact lenses have also been reported to be the reason behind infections and sometimes the cause behind people losing their eyesight.