A man stung by a bee faced real horror when he discovered the stinger was still stuck in his eye and had to eventually receive cataract surgery and a corneal transplant.
Two days prior, the 55-year-old, from Philadelphia, visited the emergency room to remove the stinger, but a part of the barb remained embedded in his cornea, Newsweek reported.
The man then visited the Wills Eye Hospital complaining of "worsening vision and pain in his right eye."
"A man suffered a bee sting directly to his eye, resulting in an intense ocular inflammatory response, which affected his vision," Wills Eye Hospital ophthalmologist Talia Shoshany told Newsweek. "The patient reports walking by a beehive at work and being stung. He was not otherwise tending to the bees."
The barb was embedded in his cornea, the clear, dome-shaped layer at the front of the eye that focuses light onto the retina.
"On physical examination at the current presentation, vision in the right eye was limited to counting fingers," the doctors wrote in a new paper in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The man's eye "showed conjunctival injection, inferior corneal edema [swelling of the cornea], and an infiltrate [collection of inflammatory cells] at the nasal limbus [region of the cornea] with a piece of retained stinger. A hyphema [blood collecting within the eye], which was attributed to iris trauma from the buried stinger and bleeding iris vessels, was also observed."
Doctors were able to remove the stinger fragment from the man's eye by using a pair of hyper-precise tweezers.
"Ocular bee stings warrant referral to an ophthalmologist owing to the severe inflammation that may result from the injury, as well as the possibility of a retained stinger in the eye," the researchers said.
Shoshany explained that the man "improved with steroid and antibiotic drops" but "eventually required both cataract surgery and a corneal transplant from the sequelae of the topical steroids and the toxic effect of the venom on the cornea.
"The patient fully recovered his vision after several months of treatment."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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