23 Year old Student goes blind after wearing her contact lenses for six months

According to DailymailUk, A student in Taiwan kept a pair of disposable contact lenses in her eyes for six months and has been left blinded.

The 23-year-old student  Kao had kept her contact lenses in at all times, even at the swimming pool.

Medics were horrified when they removed the contact lenses to find that the surface of the girl's eyes had literally been eaten by the amoeba that had been able to breed in the perfect conditions that existed between the contact lens and the eye.

The director of ophthalmology at Taipei's Wan Fang Hospital, Wu Jian-liang, said: 'Contact lens wearers are a high-risk group that can easily be exposed to eye diseases.

'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 that she had been diagnosed with acanthamoeba keratitis, which although rare was always more common in the summer.

He confirmed and spoke about the girl's case as a way of urging others to be more careful if they had to use contact lenses.

The problem is the condition can build up over several years - it's only when it gets to an advanced stage that contacts wearers become aware of a problem, as that's when it will cause red, irritated eyes, by which time it may be too late.