Case study: An embedded contact lens

While preparing a 67-year-old female patient for routine cataract surgery at Solihull Hospital, staff noticed a strange bluish mass in one of her eyes. It turned out to be 17 contact lenses stuck together. Another 10 lenses were subsequently discovered in the same eye¹ (figure 1).

It is not only contact lenses that may go astray. It is also possible for intraocular lenses to become displaced or ‘lost’, and Cunningham and Whitley discuss the reasons as to how an intraocular lens (IOL) can drop into the posterior chamber during or after cataract surgery.²

An embedded (or lost or displaced) lens is defined as one that can either be traced after or remains non-traced for any specific period. However, here I present an interesting account of an embedded rigid non-gas permeable (PMMA) contact lens that could be sighted but that could not be removed easily. I originally reported my experiences at the time, but the case study seems particularly relevant in the present-day scenario when rigid gas permeable corneal lenses are going through something of a renaissance globally and so, I would argue, worth a second look.