An eye doctor is warning people to never sleep with contact lenses after a patient was in high risk of nearly losing their eyesight for good following a severe ulcer.
Dr. Patrick Vollmer of the Vita Eye Clinic in North Carolina shared terrifying graphic photos of the patient’s infected eye after going to bed wearing contact lenses.
The patient has recently developed cultured pseudomonas ulcer after making sleeping with contact lenses a habit.
According to the patient as Dr. Patrick recalled in his Facebook post, “’I sleep in my contacts all the time and I’ve never had a problem.'”
“I sleep in my contacts all the time and I’ve never had a problem.”As an eye doctor, I literally hear this daily. The…
Posted by Vita Eye Clinic on Sunday, April 28, 2019
The doctor also added that he has been hearing the same thing from many patients on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, the habit has led to the patient developing a severe eye infection.
“The pictures below show a referred case from the local urgent care, a subsequently cultured pseudomonas ulcer, and are the direct result of sleeping in contact lenses,” Dr. Patrick wrote.
When Dr. Patrick was referred to the patient, he found that the infection was so severe that “the bacteria explosively eats away at the patient’s cornea.”
“The bacteria explosively eats away at the patients cornea in a matter of days leaving a soupy, white necrosis (dead tissue) in its wake.”
Dr. Patrick managed to stop the infection by treating it with antibiotic drops that he had to administer around the clock and steroids to reduce permanent scarring.
Even though the patient’s eye has shown drastic progress since the treatment began, Dr. Patrick said that she will have difficulty seeing even after the treatment.
Following the shocking case of eye infection, Dr. Patrick is now urging everyone who wears contact lenses to remove them before going to bed.
“To be very clear, I don’t ever recommend sleeping in any brand of SOFT contact lenses. The risks outweigh the benefits every time,” he wrote.
“It takes seconds to remove your contacts but a potential lifetime of irreversible damage if you choose to leave them in,” Dr. Patrick concluded.
Many contact lens wearers were quick to thank the doctor for reminding them about the danger of wearing contact lenses to sleep.
“I use to sleep in mine all the time, I ended up with an ulcer, fortunately, it wasn’t pseudomonas. I had to wake up every hour for 2 days to put drops in my eye, then every 2 hours for 2 days. Now, I won’t even wear my contacts for a 12 hours shift,” one user commented.
Meanwhile, another user wrote, “I learned real quick after never taking mine out like I should have and they embedded into my eye. I couldn’t wear contacts for 6 months. And now I can’t ever again due to losing tear ducts. Be wise people.”
Sleeping with contact lenses can increase 6 to 8 times the risk of getting a severe corneal infection called microbial keratitis 1-4, according to CDC.
