Fresh warnings have been issued about the dangers of wearing contact lenses for longer than recommended after a woman from Liverpool tore off part of her cornea trying to remove a lens that had been in place for ten hours – two hours longer than the recommended maximum eight hours.
Meabh McHugh-Hill has been told she was extremely lucky not to lose her sight, but will no longer be able to wear contacts due to the damage to her eye.
She explained that she’d suffered from dry eyes regularly since she was 18, but used eye drops to keep them moist rather than wearing contact lenses less frequently.
The 23-year-old said she rushed upstairs to take her lenses out while watching a film and didn’t moisten her eyes first. She’d been wearing the lenses for around ten hours, and her eyes had become so dry that the lens had become glued to her eyeball.
In her rush to remove the lens, she tore her eye, and had five days of excruciating pain and extreme light sensitivity while her eye began to recover.
Dr David Allamby of London’s Focus Clinic told the Mirror that people need to be more careful about wearing contact lenses.
“Contact lenses need to be treated with great care and the dangers of using them are often underestimated and ignored,” he said.
Buying a quirky contact lens case to store your lenses when you’re not using them might be an added incentive to spend time without lenses in.
Last month, opticians warned of the danger of wearing cosmetic contact lenses as part of a Halloween costume, particularly the risk of developing an eye infection or corneal ulcer.
