(WHDH) — Do you sleep with your contact lenses in? If so, you may want to rethink that choice.
A doctor at Vita Eye Clinic in North Carolina says he recently handled an urgent care case involving a bacterial pseudomonas ulcer, which was the direct result of sleeping with contact lenses.
Pseudomonas is an important cause of ocular morbidity and its opportunistic characteristics quickly lead to permanent blindness, according to a post on the clinic’s Facebook page.
“The bacteria explosively eats away at the patient’s cornea in a matter of days leaving soupy, white necrosis (dead tissue) in its wake,” the post said.
The doctor says he started the patient on around-the-clock antibiotic drops and steroids to reduce permanent scarring but they will likely exhibit some form of residual vision loss even after treatment.
“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,” the doctor went on to say in the post.
While images of the patient’s infected eye may be graphic, the doctor says people need to be aware of dangers that are associated with lens misuse.
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