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Doctors Discover 27 Contact Lenses in Woman's Eye

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This image shows the first 17 contact lenses removed from the woman's eye. (Image credit: The BMJ)

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.

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.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Originally published on Live Science.

Sara G. Miller
Sara G. Miller
Staff Writer
Sara is a staff writer for Live Science, covering health. She grew up outside of Philadelphia and studied biology at Hamilton College in upstate New York. When she's not writing, she can be found at the library, checking out a big stack of books.