A 67-year-old woman was scheduled for routine cataract surgery before doctors at Solihull Hospital in the UK found 27 contact lenses, stuck in the woman's right eye.


In an article published in the BMJ this month, Rupal Morjaria, a specialist trainee in ophthalmology and author of the paper, said the woman hadn't complained about any visual trouble before the operation until Richard Crombie, a consultant anesthetist at the hospital, was beginning to numb her eye for surgery when he found the first cluster of contacts. "He put a speculum into the eye to hold the eye open as he put the anesthetic in, and he noticed a blue mass under the top eyelid".

That mass was a clump of 17 lenses. The other 10 were discovered in an additional examination. "We were all shocked, We've never come across this" Morjaria said.


The woman had been wearing monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years. Sometimes, she told the surgeons, when she would try to remove a contact from that eye, she couldn't find it.


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