She went in for routine cataract surgery and ended up in the record books.
The anaesthetist at Solihull Hospital, in central England, was beginning to numb the eye of a 67-year-old woman when he found something that wasn’t tissue: a blue-green mass made up of 17 contact lenses stuck together by mucus.
When they examined it under a microscope, the rest appeared. There were 10 more. In total, 27 lenses in the right eye. The left was clear.
She had been wearing monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years. She felt discomfort, but attributed it to age and dry eyes. Sometimes, when trying to remove a lens from that eye, she couldn’t find it and thought she’d left it somewhere else.
Ophthalmologist Rupal Morjaria said they had never seen anything like it. A spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology went further: they said this is “one for the record books”. The case was published in The BMJ to highlight the importance of using contact lenses properly and getting regular eye checkups.
