Doctor forced to remove 23 contact lenses stuck in woman's eye had 'never seen anything like it'
Incredibly, a doctor once discovered 23 contact lenses in a patient's eye and surprised social media users with the removal process.
Last year, Dr Katerina Kurteeva took to Instagram to reveal that a woman had come to see her at her practice, citing pain and blurred vision.
After closer inspection, the ophthalmologist saw that the edges of a couple of contacts had become stuck together and began to pull them out of her patient’s eye.
Speaking to Insider, the Californian-based doctor said: “Pulling them out, I felt like I could still see more and asked my assistant to get my phone to record the removal.
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“Asking the patient to look down again, I could see a huge, dark-purple blob of contact lenses stuck to her eye.”
She said that the contacts looked like a ‘second pupil’ and she began to peel apart the lenses using a Q-tip.
“In nearly 20 years of practice, I had never seen anything like it,” she told the publication. “The patient couldn't believe it either and asked if I was sure about the number I was counting.”
Many of the contact lenses had bunched together to create a ‘blob’ and after removing them, Doctor Kurteeva proceeded to retrieve a few more from the corner of her patient’s eye.
After counting 23 contact lenses in total, the Cali practitioner claimed that the woman had been ‘very fortunate’ and could have ended up losing her vision.
“I begged her not to wear contact lenses again and give her eyes a break, but she's gone straight back to wearing them. I saw her a month after the examination and she was doing really well, feeling much more comfortable and seeing clearly,” she elaborated.
After posting the results of the extraction on social media, viewers came out in their droves to question what led the woman to collect the plethora of contact lenses in her eye.
One Instagram user wrote: “I get one stuck and it’s super obvious and uncomfortable… how did she get to this point??”
A second said: “Aww poor woman. Maybe she was (sic) losing her memory or something. How do you forget and pile up on them?”
“I think she forgot to remove it before to sleep and while overnight contact lenses goes around in her cornea and stuck. Then in the morning she wear again a new pair of contact lenses (sic) because she think she lost it again.... How come she didn’t even feel something weird after 1 pair of lenses stuck in her eyes?,” replied another.
Speaking about filming the removal, the doctor said: “I feel really lucky to have captured this on video to remind people to remove their contact lenses every single night. This was a happy ending, but it could have gone sour really quickly.”
Ella Scott