KOZHIKODE: The doctors in the Comtrust Eye Hospital, here, removed a centimetre-long live filarial worm from the eye of a woman through an operation. The Chief Consultant Ophthalmologist Dr Leila Mohan and Dr M S Vijayalakshmi led the team that conducted the operation on a 40-year-old woman from Kuthali, near Perambra.
The surgery did not affect the eye vision.
The woman, who has been feeling irritation and pain on her left eye since April, avoided it considering it was nothing but a regular eye problem. As the pain became unbearable and the eyes got reddish, the patient had approached eye specialists in another hospital. With medicine, she got temporary relief from the pain, which made it comeback in another couple of days. Subsequently, she called in the Comtrust Eye Hospital, Dr Leila Mohan and Dr Vijayalashmi found the worm on her eyes after scanning. Then, the doctors removed worm from the right eye of the woman after a surgery. She left the hospital after the surgery.
“It’s a rare case and the filarial worm reached human blood stream through the bites of mosquitoes, said Dr Vijayalakshmi. “Usually the presence of such worm is found in animals like cats and dog,” she said. The extracted worm belongs to the Dirofilaria tenui species.
“Once Dirofilaria immitis or heartworm infects its host, the larvae migrates into a host’s body,” she said.
The Comtrust Eye Hospital had also extracted 10 inch worm through surgery at the hospital six years back, stated a release from the hospital authority.