Glitter nearly blinded woman until doctor saw the light

A WOMAN was nearly blinded by a Christmas card after a piece of glitter dislodged and fell into her eye.

The 49-year-old was referred to an eye casualty department by her GP after suffering a pain, loss of vision and a swollen eyelid.

An initial examination by a doctor at the ophthalmology department of Singleton Hospital in Swansea spotted a lesion on her cornea and a herpes simplex infection was diagnosed as the likely cause, according to a case study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

But when the lesion was examined by the ophthalmic registrar under a powerful microscope, a shiny surface was spotted inside.

The patient then remembered getting glitter in her eye when it rubbed off a Christmas card. The glitter had formed into a clump, causing a lesion that mimicked the symptoms of a herpes infection, the report said.

The glitter was removed and the patient went home with antibiotics. “The patient was fortunate to have presented in the ophthalmic casualty department,” the report said, noting that the lesion could easily have been misdiagnosed if seen by non-specialists.

The report warned doctors always to ask about the cause of a possible trauma to the eye, even if the symptoms seemed to indicate a common infection. “The lesion may have been easily misdiagnosed as a herpetic simplex infection by non-specialists for which treatment would have been topical antiviral ointment instead of removal and antibiotics,” the report said.

In another unusual case highlighted by the BMJ, a woman thought she was suffering from serious bowel disease for six years before surgery found some packaging from a Heinz sauce sachet piercing the wall of her intestine. When the packaging was removed, she made a complete recovery.