Doctors in France have used forceps to carry out an operation on a man who was ‘pregnant in eye with flies’.
The 53-year-old patient had admitted himself to a hospital in France, complaining of an itching right eye that he had suffered from for several hours.
According to a report by the New England Journal of Medicine, the man told doctors he had been gardening near a horse and sheep farm earlier in the day when he felt something enter his eye.
After doctors examined his eye they found ‘more than a dozen mobile, translucent larvae’ moving around on his cornea – the transparent outer covering at the front of the eye.
They also found them inside his conjunctiva, the membrane lining the eyelid and white parts of the eye.
Doctors identified the organism as Oestrus ovis (also known as the sheep bot fly) larvae.
These flies can cause parastic infestations as they can fly into the eye and deposit its larvae there.
The man was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis, which is ‘an infestation of the outer structures of the eye by fly larvae.’
The doctors say they had to remove them by physically plucking them out of the eye with a pair of forceps as the creatures have ‘oral hooks’ used to cling on to the cornea.
After ten days the man reportedly recovered .