Contact lens embedded in woman's eyelid for 28 years until eye grows swollen

A 42-year-old woman in the UK had experienced an eyelid swelling and pain in her left eye. She went to the doctor and found her eye contained a piece of hard-gas permeable contact lens that was estimated to have been hidden in her eye for 28 years without her knowing.

The woman had to undergo an operation after a half year she had experienced the pain in the eyelid. Her eye bloated as the size of a pea at first but was not painful.

The swollen area was getting bigger and bigger and she felt a pain when she touched it. The doctor used a magnetic resonance scan to find a cyst, so she underwent surgery.

During the surgery, the doctors found a gas-permeable contact lens in her eye and surprisingly, it was completely integrated with the surrounding tissue without cracks before being taken out.

The woman cannot remember when the lens was embedded into the eye, while her mother recalled that at her age of 14, she was hit by badminton in the eye and she was wearing contact lenses. The family assumed the missing lens dropped out of her eye but never thought that was hidden in her eyelid.

Doctor Sirjhun Patel pointed out that the situation was rare. The woman's left eyelid has appeared as dropped. The doctor thought it is related to contact lenses, but her vision is not damaged and she is expected to recover.