In India, a 75-year-old man had a 5 inches long worm removed from his eye after a thrilling operation at Mumbai’s Fortis Hospital this week.
After thorough examination, the surgeon Dr V. Seetharaman pin-pointed a threadlike creature under a microscope on Wednesday.
The patient had previously complained of persistent pain in his eye for more than two weeks with redness and irritation.
“He was also confused and very much disturbed,” said Seetharaman.
The eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused.
“It was wriggling under the conjunctiva,” Seetharaman said, referring to the thin membrane lining the eye. “It was the first time in my career of 30 years that I had seen such a case.”
The specialist removed the 13-centimetre (five-inch) worm by making a small opening in the conjunctiva — a 15-minute operation that was observed by the patient’s horrified wife, Saraswati.
“It just kept moving and jumping; it was scary for a bit,” she told Indian Press.
The patient was relieved of his symptoms while the worm, which was alive for another 30 minutes after surgery, was sent to the hospital’s microbiologists to be identified.
Seetharaman had previously only heard of worms of about two to three centimetres being removed. “Probably this is a record,” he said.
He suggested the creature could have entered the patient from a cut in his foot or from eating raw or improperly cooked food, before entering the bloodstream and travelling to the eye.
“If the worm was not removed it could have gone into the layers of the eye and caused visual loss,” he said. “It could have entered the brain and caused major neurological problems.”
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