CHEI......Doctor share gruesome photos of what happened to a patient's eyes after she began sleeping with contact lenses in (graphic)

An ophthalmologist in the US has shared gruesome photos to show some of the damages that can happen to your eyes when you sleep with your contact lenses in.


Dr Patrick Vollmer, from Vita Eye Clinic in Shelby, North Carolina, shared photos of the damage done to a particular woman's cornea because she regularly went to bed with her lenses in. The doctor said the woman suffered from a "cultured pseudomonas ulcer" as a result of this unhealthy habit.
The woman's cornea had been eaten away by bacteria on her contact lenses.

Dr Vollmer said: "Pseudomonas (bacteria) is an important cause of ocular morbidity and its opportunistic characteristics quickly lead to permanent blindness. This will be the 4th case of cultured pseudomonas that I’ve treated in my clinic.
"The bacteria explosively eats away at the patients cornea in a matter of days leaving a soupy, white necrosis (dead tissue) in its wake."

The woman was lucky enough that the doctor gave her antibiotic drops and steroids to reduce scarring. But she is still "very likely" to have suffered some permanent form of vision loss.
Dr Vollmer added: "To be very clear, I don’t ever recommend sleeping in any brand of SOFT contact lenses. The risks outweigh the benefits every time. It takes seconds to remove your contacts but a potential lifetime of irreversible damage if you choose to leave them in"
Around 1 in 500 people who wear contact lenses suffer from some form of infection every year, Metro UK reports.