Doctor who removed 23 contact lenses from patient's eye has 'never seen anything like it'
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: @california_eye_associates/Instagram
Everyone knows that contact lenses can be a right pain in the backside, but could you imagine getting 23 stuck behind your eye?
Dr Katerina Kurteeva witnessed this first hand.
When she got a patient who said she felt like she had something in her eye and couldn't get it out, the ophthalmologist set about identifying the source of the pain.
What Dr Kurteeva found was 23 individual contact lenses all packed behind the eye and you should be warned, the video is not for the faint-hearted:
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Posting the footage to Instagram on her account @california_eye_associates, Dr Kurteeva showed her followers exactly why people always tell you it's a really bad idea to sleep in your contact lenses.
The video was captioned 'don't sleep in your contact lenses' and told viewers the patient had kept forgetting to remove her lenses before going to sleep and kept putting new ones in. Ouch.
She also later explained more about the astonishing discovery and how so many managed to build up in the first place.
Speaking to Insider, Dr Kurteeva explained how she managed to identify the problem and how all of the lost lenses just kept coming out of the patient's eye.
She said: "In nearly 20 years of practice, I had never seen anything like it.
"The patient couldn't believe it either and asked if I was sure about the number I was counting. This patient was very fortunate - she could have lost her vision, scratched her cornea, or gotten an infection.
"Although I can't be certain of how she managed to forget to remove all those lenses, it could because she had been wearing contact lenses for 30 years."
While you might think someone would be able to feel 23 contact lenses wedged behind their eyes, Dr Kurteeva explained that the patient's long history of wearing lenses had desensitised her eyes so wouldn't have felt it as much as they might have done.
When you first get your contact lenses, two of the main 'don'ts' they tell you are not to sleep or shower in them.
Taking 23 lenses from behind the eye of someone who kept sleeping in her lenses should be encouragement enough not to do it, and people can seriously damage their eyes by napping in their lenses.
Showering with them in isn't safe either, as bacteria in the water can get stuck on the lenses and cause serious infections which can even end up blinding you.
Anyone with experience of wearing contact lenses will know they can be tricky little blighters to put in and take out.
Sometimes you just can't quite get one in where it feels right, and one guy got so sick of having to do it himself that he built a robot which can insert and remove lenses for you.
While it might be a tricky task getting the lenses out, I think I'd still rather trust my own hands than let a robot poke out my eyes.