Dozens of fly larvae were discovered lying around the cornea

04/14/2022 06:36 GMT+7

The unnamed 53-year-old man from France is suffering from an uncomfortable itching in his right eye for a long time. He said he was gardening near a farm that raised horses and sheep when he felt something fly into his eye. Since then, the right eye has been very itchy.

Dozens of fly larvae were discovered lying around the cornea

He went to Saint-Etienne University Hospital for an examination and discovered the truth that made himself and the doctors extremely surprised.

His itchy eyes turned out to be very serious. Dozens of fly larvae clung to not only around the cornea but also inside the conjunctiva, the membrane lining the eyelids and the white part of the eye, the fly had laid eggs inside the eye since he did not know.

According to experts, it is very difficult to remove fly larvae from the eyes because they are extremely small creatures. Regular eyewash doesn’t really make any difference. The only way to get rid of them is to use forceps to remove them from the eyes.

Any other method can be risky because this species has a very strong hook to the cornea. If left untreated, they can cause scratches and the condition will become increasingly severe.

Tiny creatures cling firmly to the inside of a 53-year-old man’s eye

The same is true of this 53-year-old man. Doctors had to use forceps to remove individual larvae from the eye to get them all. The man was quite lucky when the larvae were only in one eye.

After removing the microscopic creatures from the patient’s eyes, doctors determined they were Oestrus ovis larvae, also known as sheep fly flies.

It is parasitic and damaging to sheep, deer, goats, horses and sometimes livestock, but there are also records showing evidence of infestation in humans. This condition usually occurs in shepherds who live near sheep.

In fact, in many parts of the world where the sheep fly fly is quite common, the annual rate of eye infections caused by this species reaches 10 cases per 100,000 people. Usually it is a simple case, the treatment is not too difficult, just need to drop the medicine to avoid infection leading to a more dangerous condition.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)