MAN’S ‘ITCHY EYE’ CAUSED BY SQUIRMING FLY LARVAE
A man’s itchy eye was due to more than a dozen fly larvae that were squirming around inside his peeper. The 53-year-old man, who lives in France, went to the emergency room after he developed an itching sensation in his right eye that had lasted several hours. He told doctors that earlier that day he had been gardening near a horse and sheep farm when he felt something enter his eye. When doctors performed an eye exam, they discovered more than a dozen mobile, translucent larvae on the man’s cornea and conjunctiva.
The cornea is the transparent outer covering at the front of the eye and the conjunctiva is the membrane that lines the eyelid and white part of the eye.
The man was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis, or a larval infestation of the eye. The only way to cure the condition is to physically remove the organisms from the eyeball. In this case, doctors removed the larvae with forceps. The organisms were identified as sheep bot flies, or Oestrus ovis, a species of fly that can cause parasitic infections in sheep worldwide. Presumably, the man became infected when a fly flew into his eye and deposited the larvae. At a follow-up appointment ten days later, the man had recovered and did not have any symptoms.