Weepy, puffy eyes that are a sign an old contact lens has got stuck
And that ‘lost’ lens could put your eyes at serious risk . . .
For 30 years, Danny Franks had worn contact lenses for up to 18 hours a day and never suffered a problem with them. Then, two years ago, while dawdling in rush-hour traffic, Danny, 53, a technical entrepreneur, suddenly experienced a searing pain in his right eye.
The sensation was so intense that he immediately pulled over.
As he did so, the father-of-two passed out, causing his foot to slip from the accelerator and his car to smack into another parked vehicle.
Danny was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack — though all he was really aware of was that he’d lost the contact lens from his right eye.
‘ I was a bit dazed by what had happened, but I realised I couldn’t feel my lens in my right eye,’ says Danny, from Manchester. ‘I wear gas permeable lenses — hard lenses that let in oxygen — for short-sightedness.
‘You can normally feel them with your finger, but when I checked my right eye, there was nothing. I just assumed it had fallen out in the accident.’
After five days’ tests, doctors said Danny’s heart was healthy and that he had just randomly passed out. Danny could still feel something scratchy in his eye, but doctors couldn’t see anything — even using a microscope.
Danny says he was told he couldn’t have a lens stuck where they couldn’t see it and that the sensation may have been where the lens had previously scratched the eye.
Yet, over the next four months, he continued to experience periodic problems with his right eye.
‘I carried on wearing lenses — using a new one in my right eye. But sometimes, the eye would be weepy or puffy, especially in the morning.
‘Every now and then, I’d get a sharp pain. I’d rub it gently and it would be fine. I was sure it was my “lost” lens stuck somewhere in my eye. But when I went to my optician, he couldn’t see anything, either.’
However, waking up on New Year’s Day 2016, Danny looked in the mirror and was astonished to see the tinge of a contact lens in his right eye: it was the missing lens. ‘I got such a shock. It had been four months and I’d been told repeatedly it wasn’t there.
‘Yet there it was, not cracked or jagged, but in perfect condition.’
THE usual advice is that you can’t lose a contact lens in your eye — but Danny isn’t the first to find otherwise. Earlier this year, medical journal Minerva reported the story of a 67-year-old woman who went to Solihull Hospital, near Birmingham, for a cataract operation.
In theatre, she mentioned that her eye didn’t feel comfortable. As doctors looked closely, a bluish foreign body emerged — which turned out to be 17 contact lenses bound together. Another ten lenses were found in her eye.
Dr rupal Morjaria, an ophthal- mology registrar who treated her, told Good Health that the woman, who used disposable lenses, had not been for regular check-ups, which would have avoided this situation. Fortunately, no longterm damage was done.
Dr Morjaria adds: ‘Nowadays, buying contact lenses from internet suppliers is very easy, and patients often opt for this and fail to have regular monitoring.’
In another case, the journal of the British Contact Lens Association reported the story of a 40-year- old woman who had repeatedly visited Gartnavel Hospital, in Glasgow, with an irritated, sticky eye.
She’d been a contact lenswearer, but had stopped using them. Although doctors found the cornea — the clear bit at the front of the eye — was infected, they couldn’t find any foreign body. Finally, they examined the eye using an instrument to hold back the lid — and revealed multiple pieces of contact lenses.
All these experiences raise questions for those among the UK’s three million contact lenswearers who have experienced a ‘lost’ contact lens.
Many fear it will get into the back of the eye and cause damage, says rob Hogan, an optometrist at iCare Consulting. But he adds: ‘You can’t “lose” a contact lens. The connective tissue inside the eye prevents it from getting further than, say, 1.5cm in.’
Contact lenses are not designed to sit under the lid, which is where they often ‘disappear’, adds raj Das- Bhaumik, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon and ophthalmic plastic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
‘So, if they end up there, they are less likely to move back where you can see them because the surface is less smooth, and curvature of the eye in that area is different from the front of the eye.’
And while dust or eyelashes are simply washed away by tears, or pushed against the conjunctiva (the clear membrane that covers the front of the eye) until they find their way out, contact lenses sit in a cushion of tears, which creates a suction force, holding the lens onto the eye, in the wrong place.
There are two main types of contact lens: soft, usually made of water-containing plastic; and gaspermeable, which are less flexible (there are also hybrid lenses that have a rigid, gas-permeable centre but a soft outside).
HARD lenses are much more likely to become dislodged, as they are smaller, more rigid and more mobile, says robert Glass, an optician based in Manchester.
It is not just the inconvenience this can cause: lost lenses can lead to vascularisation, where, if the eyeball is starved of oxygen, new blood vessels grow into the cornea, causing damage and infection.
‘I have known people whose contact lenses have become stuck in the back of the eye for a long time — at least six months, but more likely longer — and tissue has grown over it. Then there would be no choice but for the lens to be surgically removed,’ explains robert Glass.
He adds that the most likely place a lens will be trapped is underneath the upper eyelid, towards the top of the eyeball.
‘It’s much easier to pull down the lower lid and find a lost lens. That’s why so-called “lost” lenses tend to be those trapped in a pocket of conjunctiva on the upper part of the eye.’
To try to locate a ‘missing’ lens, wash your hands, look up and down and then pull the eyelid up and down to see if you can see it.
Then, using lubricant eye drops such as artificial tears, flush your eye with a stream of the liquid and gently massage the upper lid in a circular motion.
‘You can try this a few times, but don’t rub the eye itself, as the lens may cause damage or abrasion,’ says Jeff Kwartz, a consultant ophthalmologist at the royal Bolton Hospital.
Don’t be tempted to flush the eye with tap water to get it out, either. ‘You must never use water to get a lens out unless it has been boiled and cooled,’ says robert Glass.
‘In trying to remove the lens, you could cause an abrasion, and this would create an entry point for bugs in the tap water to get into the eye and cause a severe infection. This can still happen without an abrasion, though.’
Common bugs include acanthamoeba, a microscopic organism that can cause sight loss.
Meanwhile, knowing the potential risks, Danny Franks is understandably happy his lost lens didn’t cause any problems.
‘I was extremely fortunate that, despite all the best efforts by my doctor, it found its own way out and my sight was left intact.’