Blinded after applying contact lenses with wet hands
bbc.com
bbc.com
You pretty much have to have a corneal abrasion (scratch) before introducing the eye to water. It's not something you're going to get randomly from taking a shower or swimming. However, wearing contacts regularly for the last twenty years, I tend to get an abrasion once every two years or so. I'm extra careful during these times..
In 2001, there were about 7 cases in the US per year. It took me 6 months of excruciating pain and three eye doctors just to diagnose it. Luckily the third doctor really knew what he was doing. He diagnosed it in about 2-3 visits, snuck me some non-FDA approved drops with chlorine in them, and got rid of the infection.
I had to do a corneal transplant and still can't see very well out of it - cloudy with an astigmatism too large to correct.
Here's a good resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972779/
Yikes! I mean, that'd do it, but yikes.
I wonder how much chlorine it takes. Would swimming in the local pool with your eyes open help count as treatment? Probably not, the article says it's "common in tap water, sea water and swimming pools." Still.
Go one further: Goggles and a face shield, minimum. Why?
Have you ever had a right-angle grinder wheel explode? I have (it was actually a cut-off wheel). At the time I wasn't wearing even goggles, just my eye glasses. Amazingly, nothing hit me in the face, but I do remember hearing the part ricochet around my friend's shop (fortunately, I was the only one in it at the time).
Unfortunately, a piece hit my knuckle - extremely hard; I thought I had lost my finger, but amazingly not (oh, I wasn't wearing gloves, either).
I should've got stitches, but my friend took care of it; we washed it out, wrapped it up, then he gave me a percocet to take the edge off the pain. I remember at one point we looked at it after it had been a few hours, to see if I could still move it; I started to flex it, and had a small Monty Python flesh-wound moment (seriously, it made me laugh it was so cliche looking - though completely real); but I could move it. All's good today, still typing with it!
Basically me doing everything wrong (it really was all my fault, I shouldn't have been handling that equipment - I think I was also wearing shorts, a t-shirt and open-toe sandals at the time - a total DERP moment, but that's all it took), I knew better even then, but I was stupid that day. Faster than you can blink, bam, and there it was.
I take a lot more precautions now before I handle spinning cutting/grinding shit moving at 20k RPM (though I am still not a fan of my friend's open-guard 9 inch grinder - the thing will grind anything off anything, but holy hell is it dangerous to use - if that thing let loose, no amount of safety equipment will save you).
Oh - and if you are arc welding, don't wear a white shirt; reflection of the arc can bounce off inside your helmet, and still cause "welder's blindness" - which is basically a nice sunburn to the cornea; generally not a permanent thing, but hurts like hell for a long while.
Severe pain, eye constantly watering for a couple weeks.
A coworker came into work one day with a really ugly looking right eye (red, tearing, etc.) Turns out he got whacked in the face by a tree branch on his way in (he rode his bicycle to work). He was even wearing glasses but apparently that didn't protect his eye (enough). He lasted about an hour before he left to go see his eye doc who diagnosed him with a corneal abrasion. Guy was in pain for weeks.
So my assessment is that corenal abrasions are caused by 'bad luck.'
The tradeoff in the current doctor's opinion is that taking them out nightly reduces infection risk theoretically, through nightly disinfection, better access to the eye surface for your immune system, and lower risk of corneal abrasions. But handling the contacts daily for removal/reinsertion provides a new route for infection, as a lot of infections are introduced by fingers, lens cases, etc. So the added handling might offset the benefits of nightly removal enough to make it a net loss, if you're one of the people for whom sleeping in contacts doesn't produce dry eyes or irritation. Real-world data seems not good enough to compare the magnitude of those two effects.
Supposedly if they continue to grow I could lose my eyesight, and they won't actually go away even if I stopped wearing lenses.
The test they did was a couple of drops in my eye and a black-light. The end result was just a few days Vicodin script and after a couple days I was fine. The drugs didn't even reduce the pain from what I could tell. Luckily they made me tired so I slept for most of those days anyways.
Since the pain stopped, that's that.
And everyone's stories are the same stuff as I felt PRK post-op.
Although I wear extended wear lenses which are FDA approved to stay in for 30 continuous days my optometrist has emphasized that they need to come out every week for an evening so that you can evaluate the condition of your eyes and how your cornea is feeling. It only takes a few days to develop an abrasion that as folks have noted is very painful.
As long as I can wear lenses overnight I'm never going to try LASIX. Just too many people that run into issues with dry eyes, halos and poor night vision. Since I'd still have to wear reading glasses I don't even see the point - with my multifocal lenses I almost never wear glasses anymore for reading even.
Thanks to your sharing, I will no longer swim with them. I'll try prescription goggles instead.
there is a 1 in 100K chance of serious complications for modern LASIX requiring corneal transplant. That's a higher incidence than the chance of getting AK if you wear contact lenses.
Both are terrible complications but I don't see the rationale of avoiding AK by getting LASIX. I couldn't find any literature but it seems to me that the fact that LASIX damages the cornea for a time would also leave one open to an infection in addition to the complications.
Everything I've read about comparing the risk notes this factor.
I'm sure that if you wear contacts perfectly all the time the risk is very low, but as we all know people do stupid things.
That said, the decision to get surgery was more about not having to deal with glasses or contacts every day and less about the risk.
Can you link me to one of the several studies proving the incontrovertible risk factors for swimming?
Maybe I'm just that lucky. A shame my lottery tickets disagree.
Not to be too dismissive about your experiences, but making medical-related decisions based on anecdotal evidence is a really bad idea -- the debate over vaccines is a good example of this IMO.
Have a look at reenw's numerous comments in this thread for references to sources/studies that suggest that it can be that easy...
It's not the lottery, that's how infections work.
Tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces significantly elevated risks of eye infection. Your lottery ticket comparison is apt, since as the article and some other comments here reflect, you are gambling your sight with this attitude. Same one everyone hears from the guy who doesn't wear glasses while he's running a lathe. The difference being, at least that guy can argue his skill reduces his risk of injury.
Would it be wise to stop looking both ways before crossing the street because the first three times you tried it you weren't struck by a car?
All that said, after reading a number of different resources, I am considering such a change.
A shame, preservative free saline is expensive.
If I understand correctly, you have to have an open wound for this to occur?
2. Person decides to dedicate resources to educate and prevent the misfortune from happening to somebody else.
I think these people should get more recognition; it is a proof of their commitment to our society and to the well-being of their fellow humans. Much appreciated!
1. Person suffers a loss or misfortune.
2. Person makes widely inaccurate extrapolations on the actual danger, without seeing the broad implications or consequences by scaring people into woefully uninformed behavior, under the guise of 'but look! it happened to me! It'll happen to you!'.
Case in point from the media last week: ticks and Lyme disease. Some woman on the news on a personal crusade against Lyme because she contracted it when she was 13 and it caused major issues in her 20's. Sucks for her, of course, and some sort of public awareness about checking for ticks when you've been out in nature is good; but her message was hysterical. Our local equivalent of the CDC basically says 'we have basic awareness campaigns, but we don't want to scare people from going outside, because the benefits outweigh the risks'. And then you have one person who has her 15 minutes of fame, spreading massive misinformation about risks to a general population that isn't capable of understanding the concept a normal distribution curve, let alone make an assessment on an epidemiological risk.
I saw a campaign once from a parent who's child was injured at a park trying to get monkey bars banned claiming they were deadly. Life's full of small risks and tradeoffs, you have to just accept the small ones for the greater good.
Sometimes bad stuff happens, and that sucks, but it doesn't always mean something is wrong or needs to change.
Case in point: Child commits suicide. Parents seize on admission that he smoked salvia in his diary. Parents become convinced Salvia Killed Their Son, launch crusade to criminalize use of salvia. All available scientific evidence points to child being depressed and salvia not being capable of causing depression or thoughts of suicide. No one cares because parents are loud and convinced and passionate. State passes law banning salvia; names it after dead child.
Wash your hands and dry them before fitting contacts..
It depends on where you live, whether or not you check yourself after you leave the woods, what kinds of ticks they are, whether the disease is being carried, and what kind of disease it is.
I grew up in the woods. I've had lots of ticks crawl all over me. I've only been bitten a time or two. And the ticks I've encountered don't carry Lyme's disease.
And that is NOT to say that my experience is everyone's experience and that there is no danger. But your comment is absolutely exaggerated.
While if the gruesome story of how 'a tick I got just from being outside' is front page news for a few days, many people will think 'o I better keep my children inside'. And the aggregate effects of that (while not as spectacular, or even reducible to this news item), are worse than whatever it is they're trying to prevent.
How often do you see 'person has something horrible happen to them, studies the field for 10 years, becomes expert and launches a well-balanced education or prevention campaign'? I've never heard it. What I do hear and see is 'person with median intelligence has something happen to them, goes on myopic crusade using mostly pathos in the form of graphic descriptions of their physical tribulations as a crutch for their own emotional healing'. Nothing wrong with people of median intelligence (or less), but it is wrong when they use things that happened to them by accident as a means of presenting a distorted vision of reality to others.
But I believe more often than not people will remain passive in the face of a misfortune, and will simply carry on with their lives. And this what prompted me to want to recognize people – such as the lady in the article – because through little tweaks like theirs our society becomes safer, better.
It happens to them, suddenly they do care, now they are a great person?
Person is not an expert in the field but they educate people about it? Now they are a worse person quite frankly.
What you describe is exactly why part of current society is so toxic.
Lucky we have people who do care about issues that are real and serious (not just what they are invested in) and do fight and educate. But sometimes I think they are losing to the people above.
Nothing in particular about OP case.
> Person doesn't care.
Nope. She didn't know there was a risk.
> Person is not an expert in the field but they educate people about it? Now they are a worse person quite frankly.
She was treated by experts who told her what the problem was. Contact lens producers are experts too, and this person is cooperating with them.
When the person in the OP (original post) is in the comments I have no comment on the specific case.
But will reiterate, when someone is getting revenge on their white whale, you need to take a step back when listening to them.
It's why every law with a name on it (mostly girls names, let's be honest) has taken us backwards.
It isn't completely clear from the article (and maybe she can inform us, because I'd like to know), but it sounded like there was a warning included somewhere, it just wasn't in bolded 48pt red letters or something...?
I used to wear contacts for several years, but later switched back to contacts. I live in the United States, so I understand that may have bearing here, with our laws on medical information via the FDA and CDC informing things, which may be different from what the NHS did.
I do recall, though, when I got my contacts and my lens cleaning solution and other stuff, that there was a pamphlet included in the boxes of both the contacts and the lens solution, that unfolded into this large-ish document with fine print (you know what I mean - such documents are included with every single kind of prescription drug or device, and often with every kind of OTC drug as well - especially ones involving the eyes, or which were once Rx only) describing everything about the contacts, about the solution, about care and cleaning, about the molecular structure of the solution (seriously!), and...about potential problems of improper care and other issues which could arise.
I remember reading the whole thing, which I tend to do with all such pamphlets, because you never know what interesting and useful information you'll find (sometimes, you'll even find humor buried in them - almost like they don't expect anyone to read them, and so you hit on weird things many people never see). I recall reading about this particular issue, and so I paid special attention to dry my hands before handling the contacts, and flushing them well with the solution before I put them in. If I had any irritation at all before putting them in or afterward, I didn't wear them, and/or removed them - and put on a pair of glasses (which I had gotten with every new prescription as a backup).
Was this information written in bold on the outside of the box or whatnot? No. Should it have been? I don't know. Again, the fact that it was included at all may just be due to our laws here in the United States. Furthermore, I'm not even sure if it would matter if it were included in bold print on the outside (or if, over time, this woman's campaign won't suffer in the same manner); much like the various "Are you sure? (Y/N)?" dialog popups on software, or the various "may cause cancer" warning in bold print on cigarette packs, such warning may ultimately be ignored instead of followed or read. Then we're right back to where we were. People will even claim up and down that they weren't warned enough, too (and make post-hoc rationalizations when shown the evidence that the warnings were there).
There's not much we can do to fix this; this woman's campaign is laudable in trying to fix it, but I think that much like nobody reads those pamphlets except weirdos like me, many are going to ignore the message written in bold on the outside of the boxes - because reasons.
James Titcombe who has been campaigning around maternity safety, particularly culture of midwives, after his child died. He used to work in nuclear safety, he now works in patient safety. https://twitter.com/JamesTitcombe?lang=en
Martin Bromiley, who campaigns around clinical human factors after his wife died. He uses his knowledge of airline style investigation. https://twitter.com/MartinBromiley?lang=en
And the @NHS twitter account features a range of different clinicians, patients, and carers. https://www.england.nhs.uk/atnhs/curator-archive/irenie-ekke...
Reduced spatial awareness on the bad side (duh), so you'll be slightly more likely to stumble a bit or bump into something and seem clumsy
Certain sports are much harder and you pretty much couldn't compete in them - almost any sport involving a ball. However this leaves lots of sports and I was fairly successful in grappling sports afterwards
Low level fear - I don't have a spare and being actually blind is obviously orders of magnitude more impact on your life.
It never bother me, except what you talked about, is some very particular tasks, some task like filling a glass of water can be challenging as I have no parallax, so no real depth of field. Sometimes I can't tell if your glass is right under my jug or not. Sports with ball, forget it, ping-pong and badminton was just impossible for me in high-school/college. Bumping into things happen often, and no 3D movies for me, also VR is a lot less appealing and immersive :(
Interesting experience. 3d vision really means depth is directly perceived in the same manner as width and height. Now I understand why so many people are afraid of heights.
Can't find the name of the company who do that, I did contact them, but mine was too severe to be considered for trials.
No 3d for me, thanks!
About the only other negative I've hit is I realized in my 30s that I can't seem to put a baseball hat on straight.
I haven't tried them and I have stereo vision so ymmv.
I would also recommend PRK over LASIK because LASIK requires permanent flaps to be cut on the surface of your eyes. This can sometimes lead to some nasty accidents with the flap being damaged in certain cases. PRK has been around a lot longer and requires wearing bandages over the eyes for a couple of weeks, which is why LASIK became more popular for a while (i.e. the flaps act as bandages). But now they can provide contact bandages for PRK where you aren't blind and useless for weeks making LASIK less desirable.
The newer SMILE procedure does not require a flap: http://eyewiki.aao.org/Small_Incision_Lenticule_Extraction_(...
I also got weird stuff like my own blood plasma that has been centrifuged and filtered to put in my eye, as well as Mitomycin-C. Your doctor may offer those, and both of those seemed to have clinical trials to reduce the chance of hazing.
Just think whether or not glasses bother you so much that you need it though, I never really got bothered by glasses a lot, and laser ablated vision is a little wonky for me because my pupils dilate a lot and that causes lots of starbursting at low light which I think I didn't see with glasses.
SMILE is new but insanely expensive, though it's the only procedure you can do if you need high correction.
LASIK you flap up the epithelial cells and part of your cornea, and then the laser comes in and ablates the inside of your cornea and you put it back on. If you need high correction, you need more depth of ablation. Since you "lost" some of your cornea because of the flap in terms of depth that can be ablated, for medium to high correction, it is not possible. I think if you have -5 or so it starts getting dicey.
PRK you don't have the flap, they just rub off the epithelial cells so you have the entire cornea to ablate if you want. I think this also starts getting dicey with really high ablation depth, obviously. If you have like -12, the doctor will not even think about PRK.
SMILE you actually pop in a high diffraction, engineered lens in, which can be used to achieve a ludicrously high correction, at the cost of well, cost, and maybe more uncertain long term prognosis?
- Pick up a dropped contact lens from the floor, blow on it, and put it on
- Take it out/put it in without any hand washing
- Rinse contacts with tap water
- Reuse the same lens for weeks just because
What I do:
- Wash hands before handling
- Rinse fingers with contact/saline solution for a couple of seconds
- Use daily disposables and do not reuse them
- If I drop a lens, I just grab a new one.
It's hard to make decisions based on this unfortunate story without understanding that person's hygiene/lens wearing habits, personal health history, and so on.
YMMV.
I like to think I'm less stupid these days, and I'm thankful my eyes seem to be doing fine.
Of course, when I started I ran into an interesting issue: occasionally I'd wind up pulling them out briefly and reseating them for comfort. Once or twice, that bit me in the, er, eye when an eyelash got inserted with the lens. I wound up trying a couple different brands as a result, before stumbling on my current choice (Dailies Total1 lenses). At the risk of sounding like an ad, they're beyond comfortable and practically impossible to feel. Which has its own disadvantages. On a couple of occasions, a lens got shifted to the side of my eye and I wound up putting another one in the following day. And let me tell you, that's painful as hell after a few seconds.
I just wish there was a similar disposable lens designed to alleviate digital eyestrain. No way in hell would I willingly go to 30 day lenses.
0. http://www.eyedolatryblog.com/2017/01/tired-eyes-understandi...
I am definitely one of those people who wear contact lenses for as long as possible - more than a month for sure.
If they fall on the floor, I'll try and rinse them off with contact solution - if I have it available - otherwise I'll just use tap water.
I do wash my hands before touching my eyes, though.
I know I am probably increasing my risk for some terrible eye infection, but so far I've never experienced any negative drawbacks.
But because I use dailies only, don't even need to buy a disinfecting solution, and no chance of bacteria accumulating overnight. I'm actually curious why doesn't everyone just use dailies. They aren't much costlier, while being way more comfortable with less upkeep.
I'd really like to understand what role the lenses play in the infection occurring. Presumably an eye without a lens could also get the infection from a water source?
Anyway, this is a good PSA.
(I may be wrong though, but I think I heard it creating a stagnant, oxygen poor enviornment that did it.)
Even worse, it sounds like after a foothold is established, they become entrenched, and eventually no longer need the supportive bootstrap environment the contact lens initially provided. Based on the multiple relapses described in the article, it sounds as though her original infection never completely went away. So the infection can happen without contact lenses, but normal healthy eyes seem capable of fending off these attackers.
Normally, the eye is constantly flushing fluid across its surface, and I suppose the socket and inner eyelids must assist in fighting off invasive organisms, even if simply by friction and moisturization. Somehow, the artificial cap of the contact lens is different, holding the organisms in place, and offering stability and traction.
I've worn both, and whenever getting monthlies, my optometrist always told me not to get in the water with them/avoid getting water on them. In regards to dailies, it apparently shouldn't be an issue, as presumably if you get in the water with a daily, you'll probably be taking it out <12h later.
As a long-time contact lens wearer who has at time been lax with hygiene best-practice (often I drop a lens in the basin, pick it our and rinse off with saline solution), I was a little alarmed after reading what you've been through.
Can you point me towards any further background reading or references on this topic?
I knew it was very bad to shower with contacts on but I figured the daily ones would be no big deal.
Presumably this means you should be extremely careful while showering if you scratch your cornea.
Here it is:
http://www.moorfields.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/acanthamoeb...
It's a shame that headsets and glasses don't work together that well, and I hate the smudges that you get on glasses with a passion.
I highly value my sight, so I have a routine which makes me feel comfortable with sticking things in and touching my eyes twice a day. My optometrists have always told me to avoid using water, saliva, etc, to clean the lenses, and so I do.
1. Wash my hands with soap and water, and usually scrub my fingernails with a brush.
2. Grab a fresh paper towel and pat dry my hands to sop up the water. Rubbing my hands with the paper towel, in my opinion, could leave fragments which could transfer to my eye / behind the contact.
3. Open the contact container, pull out the right lens, close the contact container.
4. Insert the right lens.
5. Repeat step 3 with left lens.
6. Clean up the area with the paper towel from step 2.
I regularly (nearly every day) shower with the lenses in, though while I make an effort to avoid getting water in my eyes, splashes obviously happen. I've also spent weeks vacationing and swimming in the ocean with the lenses in.
It is my hope that by removing and disinfecting the lenses each night I can ward off infections while also minimizing inconvenience.
I had one eye infection in my life which happened right after going to the optometrist and having my eyes checked (they put a fluid into my eyes to dilate the pupil, after that putting my lens in seemed to irritate my eye and caused an infection somehow).
But one thing I can not do is shower with my lenses in. I have done it several times but it always makes me feel so uncomfortable, the feeling of my eyes becomes so annoying (I suppose due to essentially taking steaming hot showers, the rising water vapor or something irritates my eye).
Both my sister and I used to wear contacts, but we ended up getting LASIK done several years ago. Best decision of our lives.
Though apparently the person in this post also was wearing dailies so they're clearly not fool proof.
RGP lenses require a separate cleaner for 30 seconds then a solution for inserting/soaking (eventually they did come out for an all-in-one solution but I never got the same comfort from it). Since day one I was taught by my teenage eye doctor to used tap water as the rinse of the cleaning solution and did for all that time. If you didn't get the cleaning solution off real well, you'd feel it in your eye for a minute. The instructions say to use soaking solution as the "rinse" but I never did as it would be much more expensive and water always worked.
Maybe the type of lens is more susceptible to AK/Infections? RGP is a rigid almost hard type of lens. I've never had any sort of problem using tap water all this time. I've even slept in them a few times in my life. It would seem softer lenses would allow things to adhere more? I wonder if there are any correlations to the type of lens to infection?
I went to dailies two years ago mostly for comfort and convenience. I don't wearcontacts as much as I used to as i've gotten older (just throw on my glasses now because who cares now..) and RGP can get uncomfortable if not wearing them often enough. It appears dailies can give one a false sense as you get "fresh" ones every day. I've swam/showered with them at times and now worry after reading she got the AK even using dailies.
I am bewildered actually because you'd think dailies would be the best possible lens for your eye health. Soft, highly breathable and new pair every use.
I would love to either reduce or eliminate my need for contacts, but since I'm blind in one eye, surgery is considered too risky. Wearing contacts, however, is something optometrists are fine with, although they want me to have an exam every 6 months.
There's lot of people who've had these procedures done, mostly without consequences but some with issues of varying degrees of severity, but there is not a ton of people who've had this early in their life and been fine for 70 years.
Though I suppose plenty of people were corrected in their 50s or older and lived much longer and never had an issue.
There was probably some animal testing too, with animals that age faster than us but still undergo similar changes.
Further, people with Lasik will still get near or far sighted with age, but they tend to be better able to function without glasses.
One more thing to live in fear of besides climate change, cancer, drug resistant bacteria, nuclear war, terrorism and the singularity. Yay.
Should I feel better or worse that it's far less likely to affect me than any of those things?
Also, after swimming for an hour and taking a break, I like to remove them for a bit. It has happened that I got water in my eye in this way. Never had an infection because of it though!
Also, I heard from a contact wearer another painful accident is forgetting to rinse contacts with sterlie saline after they've been cleaned, that it burns pretty good. Nothing like losing your corneas, but still Pavlovian human monkey training.
It smelled and and tasted like our swimming pool water to me.
Edit: and your swimming pool water had if course even more chlorine, much more then I'd expect to find in Europe.
I have to admit that I didn't know that contact lenses shouldn't come in contact with water and that it could lead to such disastrous effects which can even end in loss of eye sight. However the first time I was at an optician to figure out what kind of lenses I need, they explained me very carefully that I should -always- wash my hands and dry (and not touch anything else other than the lenses in between) them with a clean paper towel before putting in our taking out my lenses.
Furthermore never to reuse the cleansing liquid you put into the little boxes where you store your contact lenses. I strictly followed this procedure over the years without any problems but when I was at the eye specialist to get my glasses subscribed I told her that I never had any infections using contact lenses and she smiled and said that it's only a matter of time. This really got me thinking because I was planning on using daily contact lenses for when I do sports or go out. :(
The reason why I stopped was because the lenses started becoming dry quickly and I just couldn't see the screen clearly after wearing them for a couple of hours. Nothing in my computer setup or usage habits changed. I've seen various optometrists, but they couldn't give me a reason why this was happening. They just said if I can see better with glasses, I should do that for computer use :D
I now only wear dailies, but very rarely - usually only if I'm doing sports or swimming (although maybe I won't after reading this article...). Before switching I tried different brands of contact lenses (both monthly and daily), as well as turning down brightness and flux, but they weren't helpful in my case.
I really love how that sentence implies something about backend devs :)
Thank you so much for posting this and thanks to the lady in the piece for spreading awareness about this!
It sounds odd that if you throw away lenses after showering anyway - the risk would be different?
Sounds like if one has been wearing lenses for a few hours, one should take precautions with getting water in the eye - with or without lenses?
Also it appears, swimming with dailies - if one wears glasses before/after and throw away the dailies - should be reasonably safe from what I can gather?
Alternatively, it would seem a lot more people would be infected even not wearing lenses at all?
A. wearing dailies for only a day at a time
B. didn't shower/swim with them
It is incredibly unlikely that a bacterial infection from tap water would be able to manifest itself on an otherwise healthy eye in less than 16(?) hours. The timeframe/exposure just doesn't add up for me.
Are you saying this never happens? No on is saying it is a huge problem, just that people should be aware of it.
Her case just make have been incredibly invasive? The medication may have pushed the infection deeper into the eye or surrounding tissue, or it may have developed resistance.
My point is that I'm betting those 125 are a subset of people that don't use their lenses according to best practices.
It's not bacterial, it's amoebic.
I think you're being unduly skeptical and I can't find a reason beyond your own intuition, which doesn't really hold much weight against first hand accounts from individuals and trusted news sources without any clear bias or motivation to be misleading.
My point is: who is more likely to get an infection? The people that sterilize their cuts and scrapes, or the people that don't? Same thing here: for such a tiny subset of total contact wearers, it's unlikely that it has nothing to do with your lens hygiene. I doubt any one of the 125 AK sufferers in the UK were following recommended lens care/application to the letter. That does not seem unduly skeptical to me.
A friend of mine got it just a month ago, and luckily he got it diagnosed correctly right away. He woke up in the morning with no issue, and by the evening he was in the emergency room. A quick diagnosis saved his eyesight despite the very aggressive onset, the fastest the doctor treating him had ever seen.
Maybe AK is silently established in the eye sometimes, and an abrasion or some other factor allows it to take hold in the cornea? My friend was soldering with bad ventilation and he probably got plenty of microscopic resin particles in his eyes, which might have caused abrasions? His AK took hold right on the edge under the contacts.
Now, this is very refreshing and nice to see, she seems a great person.
So thanks.. Thanks for adding one more very rare thing for me to be constantly afraid of.
Dissent is expressed by 'affecting' expertise but not actually offering any evidence of expertise ie. I am an eye doctor or I am a researcher in this area or I have some experience in this area, and here is the evidence and informed opinion from the industry and research.
Skepticism is backed not by reason or logic but rushing to minimize or rubbish the claims with outrageously baseless innuendo about the author's hygiene and 'personal feelings'.
You can be never too careful when it comes to your eyes, and yet the thread is seemingly full not of dissenters and skeptics but people who apparently don't care.
Since no rational individual responds to risk by ignoring or dismissing them that's not a scientific mindset, it's an irrational mindset overwhelming discussion and debate.
This is a toxic attitude in most cases. What makes it inexcusable is we can all be 110% sure if it affected them personally or their family in the slightest way they would not be rushing to diminish or question the authors hygiene but asking for her help.
To make sterile water, you must do the following: 1. Use a pressure cooker, a hermetically sealed pot or an autoclave. Make sure that the temperature rises above the normal boiling point of water. 2. Fill the cooker with water. 3. Place cooker with water on a heat stove. 4. Boil water for a minimum of 20 minutes. 5. The temperature within the cooker should be maintained at 121 degrees Celsius or 250 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the boiling period.
http://www.cascadehealthcaresolutions.com/How_to_make_steril...
This has got me thinking of getting Lasik or prk so eliminate this whole class of potential issues.
Our eyes are incredible. Whenever we try to improve them, we incur risks. I'm sure glasses are included in this.
More to the OP: Contact fluid has disinfectant in it, is it a solution to put a drop of it on the contact (inside) before putting it on? So any bad things that might get stuck under there are killed.
The CDC puts the rate of AK infection at 1-33 per million contact lens wearers, in case that makes anyone feel better. Still, it's something people should be aware exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornea
Incredible! Why are there any pain receptors at all?
So that you recognize, terminate, and learn to avoid situations that cause injury to the eye.
Contact lenses are pretty much an impossible proposition. We can't get healthcare professionals to always correctly sanitize their hands, what chance do contact lens users (many of them teenagers) have of only handling their lenses and eye after sanitizing their hands, always sanitizing the lenses themselves in the proper, new solution and changing them on the right timescale?
And if you fail at any of these steps and get an infection, you are pretty much not going to come out of it without permanent damage of some sorts. You basically need to immediately get to an ophthalmologist and apply the proper eye drops, because even after a day you could have enough scarring to partially lose vision or increase sensitivity to light.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_privilege#Immunological...
With leprosy, sufferers lack the ability to feel when they've injured themselves, they end up tearing the flesh off their limbs and breaking the feet down to a pulp through accidents as they can't tell they've injured themselves.
If you don't feel the piece of sand in your eye, then you're going to carry on damaging the eye until you do feel it. At which point, with minimal pain receptors the eye is likely damaged beyond recovery.
I had a scratched cornea recently, the scratch enabled an infection to take hold very rapidly.
For those who don't know the difference, hard gas-permeable lenses are more like a piece of hard plastic than a gel like substance, they can't dry out.
I wonder if those corneal scrapes are safe though.
Moreover, the infection being discussed in this article is incredibly rare - and contact lenses are generally quite safe - so the fact that neither you nor anyone else commenting here has been exposed to it shouldn't be surprising. That you've made it 7 whole years without going blind isn't some vindication of your own hygienic patterns, or an indictment of hers.