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A 23-year-old has permanently damaged her eyes and may even be blind after reportedly wearing the same pair of contact lenses continuously for 6 months.
Doctors say by not removing and cleaning the lenses regularly a tiny single-cell amoeba was able to thrive in the student’s eye by eating her cornea.
The director of ophthalmology at Taipei’s Wan Fang Hospital, Wu Jian-liang, told The Daily Mail: ‘Contact lens wearers are a high-risk group that can easily be exposed to eye diseases.
‘A shortage of oxygen can destroy the surface of the epithelial tissue, creating tiny wounds into which the bacteria can easily infect, spreading to the rest of the eye and providing a perfect breeding ground.
‘The girl should have thrown the contact lenses away after a month but instead she overused them and has now permanently damaged her corneas.’
He said that she had been diagnosed with acanthamoeba keratitis, which is a rare condition that usually occurs during the summer months.
Jian-liang spoke about this particular case as a way of urging others to be more careful if they had to use contact lenses, writes The Daily Mail.
The condition can build up over several years. Wearers may only become aware of a problem when it develops to an advanced stage, as it causes red, irritated eyes, writes The Daily Mail.
Agencies/Canadajournal
