Woman has 23 contact lenses removed from her eye. Video is viral

(Image credit: california_eye_associates/Instagram)

A woman in the US had as many as 23 lenses removed from her eye as she forgot to take them out at night and kept putting in new ones every day for nearly a month, her doctor said.

Dr Katerina Kurteeva, the ophthalmologist who treated the woman, shared a video detailing the removal process on Instagram. The clip has gathered over a million views.

It showed her lifting the patient's eyelid and using cotton wool to take out green-tinted lenses from underneath it.

Then she used a surgical instrument to carefully separate the lenses.

"A rare occasion when someone forgot to remove contact lenses at night and kept on putting a new one in every morning. 23 days in a row," Kurteeva wrote.

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A post shared by Ophthalmologist | Dr. Katerina Kurteeva M.D. | Newport Beach (@california_eye_associates)

The doctor told Insider the patient came to her complaining of pain in her eye. Her first thought was to look for foreign objects or scratches. But when she didn't find either, she looked deeper. For that she used an eyelid speculum to keep the patient's upper and lower eyelids open.

She asked the woman to look down and spotted edges of her contact lenses. Then she proceeded to remove them.

Kurteeva said her patient was lucky she didn't scratch her cornea or develop an infection. Her eye was washed with distilled water and she was prescribed anti-inflammatory drops.

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A post shared by Ophthalmologist | Dr. Katerina Kurteeva M.D. | Newport Beach (@california_eye_associates)

The doctor said he could not be sure about how the patient forgot to remove the lenses. But since she was used to wearing lenses for a long period of time, she would not have felt so much uneasiness with 23 lenses

"Older people's eyelid fornix, the least sensitive space, is much deeper, and the contact lenses just sat there for a while not bothering her," Kurteeva told Insider.

The doctor hopes this patient's story helps educate others about contact lens hygiene.