It was while they preached the 67-year-old woman for a cataract routine surgery that the surgeons suddenly looked something strange: there, in the woman's eye, there was a bluish and protruding spot.
The British doctors naturally took a closer look, before they shocked to pull out what turned out to be 17 contact lenses. They then examined the woman more thoroughly, just to find 10 lenses for the same eye.
From now on we go with glasses ...
It is easy to imagine that this is a made up story that has spun out of control online (fake news), but the event is actually discussed in its entirety in The British Medical Journal.
Here we learn that the patient was unsure that the contact lenses were at all eh ... missing, without unfortunately saying anything about how she managed to forget / lose the lenses.
Incredibly, the 27 contact lenses - which had slid behind and under the eyelid (ugh) - did not give any serious ailments. She had a dry eye, and what she described herself as a mild discomfort, but thought it was because she was getting old.
"None of us have seen anything similar before," says surgeon Rupal Mrjaria at the hospital of England's Solihull, who submitted the report to BMJ.
It was just a big lot. All of the 17 contact lenses were glued together. We were very surprised that the patient did not notice it because the lens should had created a lot of irritation in and around the eye.
Surgeons decided not surprisingly to delay the surgery they actually were there to perform as they were worried that the lump of bacteria could trigger an inflammation of the inner eye.
Although, of course, this is an extreme case, Surgeon Mrjaria believes it is important that people get to know about the incident. This then obviously is possible to lose a number of lenses in the eye without being aware of it, which increases the risk of serious infections, and which in the worst case can lead to permanent vision loss.
Doctors do not know why this woman was so free of symptoms over such a long period of time, but in the report we can read that it is likely that her eyes are uncommonly "profound".
Gizmodo, one of the media who caught the case, has been inquiring with a number of other surgeons if they have seen something similar. The closest they come to is Kevin Henshaw, an ophthalmologist in the southwest of England, who says he has experienced a case involving five contact lenses in throat eyes.
Not exactly eye-catching after reading about the 27 ...
