Case study: The curious case of a contact lens in the eye for 10 years

Contact lenses being ‘lost’ in the eye are sadly commonplace in modern optometric practice. In most cases a lens is in the eye only for a few days at most and there rarely is any damage done. However, there are cases of lenses inducing keratitis.¹ There has already been a report of a lens being embedded in the eye for 10 years, though this was as a result of trauma² and quite significantly different to this case that we report here. In this account, we characterise a contact lens, which we believe has been in the eye for at least 10 years and we provide reasons why we hypothesise this to be the case.