I have just been reading the article in Optician about the patient with 27 contact lenses in her eye.
Last summer, I had a thankfully rare find in my contact lens patient, who while on a golfing holiday in Lanzarote, got a fly in his eye during a game. He removed the fly but his eye continued to feel irritable. He saw an ophthalmologist out there who prescribed him lubricating eye drops and advised him to see his optician once he was home if his eye was still irritated.
He flew home a couple of days later and made an appointment to come straight in to our practice.
Slit lamp examination revealed no staining with fluorescein, a healthy cornea and a small fly larvae – a maggot – crawling around on his lower lid margin. I removed this with a cotton wool bud and everted his upper eyelid. There, crawling about on his palpebral conjunctiva were two further maggots. I removed these both and calmly informed the patient as to what I had found and removed.
I swiftly called my local eye hospital and the patient was seen there the same day.
Thankfully, no more maggots were found.
I learned that the bot fly often likes to pray on human eyes and lay its eggs there.
It is a scary thought, as how often do insects fly in your eyes?
