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Man Seeks Medical Help After Flies Lay Eggs In His Eye (Photos)
Forceps were employed by doctors in France to operate on a patient who had fly eggs laid in his eye.
The 53-year-old man had gone to a French hospital, complaining of an itchy right eye that had been bothering him for several hours.
The man informed the physicians that he had been gardening nearby a horse and sheep farm earlier in the day when he felt something enter his eye, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
After an inspection was carried out on his eye, “more than a dozen mobile, translucent larvae” were seen crawling around on his cornea, the transparent outer layer at the front of the eye.
Also, it was discovered inside his conjunctiva, which is the membrane that lines the eyelid and the white parts of the eye.
The parasite was identified as Oestrus ovis (also known as the sheep bot fly) larvae by the doctors.
These insects can fly into the eye and deposit their larvae there, therefore, creating parasitic infections.
The man was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis, defined as “a fly larvae infection of the outer components of the eye.”
These larvae have ‘oral hooks’ that stuck to the cornea, according to the physicians, so they had to be physically take out of the eye with a set of forceps.
Fortunately, the man recovered fully after ten days.