A team of Chinese plastic surgeons recently reported the bizarre case of a 33-year-old woman who had lost no less than five contact lenses behind her left eye.
The patient, referred to only as Ms. A, arrived at the Plastic Surgery Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, in Beijing, to have her hemifacial atrophy treated in order to improve her facial symmetry. The initial examination results showed that the left side of her face was atrophied and her left eyeball was slightly sunken. After carefully examining the woman’s face, the medical team decided to use autologous fat grafting to mitigate the effects of her condition. What they didn’t count on was finding not one but five different contact lenses while grafting fat into the empty space behind the eyeball. She told doctors that she had lost several contact lenses in the past few months, but never imagined they were stuck in her eye.
Ms. A had been wearing contact lenses for several years, and the hemifacial atrophy created just enough space for them to disappear into. Hemifacial atrophy is a condition in which the fatty tissue inside the eye atrophies and the eyeball shrinks. When fat was injected behind Mr. A’s eye, it pushed out five different contact lenses she had thought had fallen out accidentally.
“Fortunately, in Mr. A’s case, there were no problems caused by the contact lenses remaining in his eyes,” the medical team noted. “But, if they had persisted for a long time, the risk of side effects such as corneal wounds and microbial infections would have increased.”
The bizarre case has been attracting the attention of ophthalmologists and other medical communities because it is reportedly “the first case in which multiple contact lenses have been confirmed to have been hidden inside the conjunctiva.”
Interestingly, Ms. A. never reported any unusual symptoms while the five contact lenses were stuck behind her left eyeball.
the medical team emphasized the need for plastic surgeons to perform comprehensive ocular examinations before treating patients with hemifacial atrophy who normally wear contact lenses.
