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Abstract
A 67-year-old myopic man presented to the Ophthalmology Department of a teaching hospital in the mountainous state of Sikkim with complaints of red eye, ocular discomfort, and sensation of something moving in his right eye that lead to occasional visual blurring from the previous four days. His symptoms started after washing his face in a stream. Clinical diagnosis was a leech in the limbus of the right eye at the 12 o'clock position. Ocular leech infestation should be considered in a patient with a history of swimming or face washing in streams and lakes. Herein we report a case of ocular leech infestation that presented as red eye with intermittent blurring of vision in the affected eye, and discuss the differential diagnosis and clinical significance.
Keywords: blurring of vision, leech, red eye
Introduction
Ocular foreign body is a common indication for an emergency ophthalmic consultation; however, the presence of a leech as an ocular foreign body is rare. Reports are scarce in the literature, even though cases have been mainly presented from Japan and fairly commonly seen in Tasmania. Ocular leech infestation should be considered in a patient with a history of swimming or washing their face in streams and lakes. Successful approaches to treatment include complete removal of the foreign body, examination for perforation of the globe and management of the same.
Case report
A 67-year-old man was seen in the Ophthalmology Department of a teaching hospital in the mountainous state of Sikkim with complaints of redness, foreign body sensation, and occasional sense of something moving in his right eye leading to intermittent blurring of vision during the previous four days. History revealed that the onset of his symptoms began after he visited a stream to wash his face. There was no history of trauma to the eye or any other chronic eye disorders other than...