ITCHING of the eye is usually something most of us ignore. Although it can be really uncomfortable, most times an itchy eye is not a serious health issue.
But for one man in France, it was life or death. The unnamed individual had over dozen of maggots growing in his eye.
The 53-year-old man was rushed to the emergency room after developing an unbearable itching sensation in his right eye. He informed the doctors that he had been gardening earlier in the day near a horse and sheep farm.
And in the midst of it, he felt a foreign object enter his eye. Of course, upon hearing this, the doctors performed a quick scan to identify the cause.
But when attending to him, they were immediately taken aback by what they discovered.
According to the hospital report, the man had “more than a dozen mobile, translucent larvae squirming on his cornea and conjunctiva.”
The eye’s cornea is the transparent outer layer that protects the front of the eye. Whereas, the conjunctiva is a membrane that lines the eyelids and white parts of the human eye.
The patient was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis or an infestation of the outer structures of the human eye by fly larvae.
But fortunately, the doctors were able to rectify the issue by physically extracting the larvae one by one. And after doing so, they managed to identify the culprit as Oestrus ovis (also known as the sheep bot fly) larvae.
According to the University of Florida, Oestrus ovis is a fly species that causes parasitic infections in sheep. However, it sometimes also preys on humans.
As such, the doctors believed the patient became infected with the fly’s squirming larva when he was near the horse and sheep farm.
Thankfully, he was quick to seek treatment. If left untreated, the larva’s “oral hooks” and “body spicules” could have caused abrasions on his eye.
