This is the case of a young lady who may not have washed her hands to put her contact lenses in after she had used some facial cream. The cream may be alkaline which is NOT good for the tissues of the eye. Alkaline substances tend to start damaging the cornea and working it's way deeper and deeper into the tissue.
On her way to work she started seeing hazy, but it didn't hurt. She came into the office and she really didn't look that bad, just a little damage to some surface cells of her cornea and a lot of corneal swelling. I had her irrigate her eye and use a lot of artificial tears the rest of the day to wash out everything and lubricate the eye. She called me last night in pain and I prescribed an antiobiotic/steroid combination eyedrop to calm down the inflammation and prevent bacterial infection.
Today she feels a lot better, and although her corneal swelling is a lot better, she has a lot of damage to the epithelial cells and her vision is worse. You can see that damage in the pictures.
Steroids can delay wound healing so, after consulting with my favorite corneal specialist, who concurs with me, I am having her use antibiotic drops only.
She will heal and I will watch her closely to make sure she heals with minimal or no scarring. However, the lesson is learned to WASH YOUR HANDS before putting contact lenses in. Washing hands is not just to prevent infection, but to wash off anything that the hands touched that could be toxic to the cornea.
Below is right eye yesterday.
Below is right eye today, showing the damaged epithelium cells.
This photo below is the left eye yesterday showing mild damage to surface cells.
The picture below is the left eye today, showing two heavily damaged areas of epithelium.
Below is the OS lesion using white light.
