Student Goes Blind After Leaving Contacts In For 6 Months

Lian Kao, a Taiwanese student recently became blind due to eyeball-eating amoebas. Daily Mail reports that the hungry single-celled organisms formed after she knowingly left her contacts in for six months straight without changing or cleaning the lenses. The lack of attention to eye hygiene created a breeding ground for an acanthamoeba infection to form in her contacts and her corneas. After the amoebas formed, they began burrowing into the student�s eyeballs, causing her to lose her vision. She allegedly left the one pair of contacts in even while swimming and sleeping. Wu Juan-liang, the director of ophthalmology at Taipei�s Wan Fang Hospital, explained. �A shortage of oxygen can destroy the surface of the epithelial tissue, creating tiny wounds into which the bacteria can easily infect, spreading to the rest of the eye and providing a perfect breeding ground. The girl should have thrown the contact lenses away after a month but instead she overused them and has now permanently damaged her corneas.� he said.