Wednesday Sep 03, 2008
PANADURA: An eye surgeon in a Panadura hospital detected an 11-centimeter worm in the eye of a woman during a surgery.

Eye surgeon specialist Jayantha Vithanapathirana of the Lions Sightgift eye hospital in Panadura performed the operation on Kalida Umma, 55, of Wattalpola, Panadura on Monday and detected the worm similar to a white thread.

This was the third occasion he detected such a worm, the surgeon said

An operation to remove the worm from the patient’s eye was carried out at the hospital on Monday evening.

“The worm will be sent to the Colombo University Medical Faculty or the Medical Research Institute (MRI) for further study to find as to how the worm, which falls either to Ripens, Ignis or Conjunctive class entered the patient’s eye avoiding lymph nodes,” Dr. Vidanapathirana said.

He said three operations of this type have been done in Sri Lanka and there is a doubt if this is due to a mosquito or dog filaria. “Saleem visited the hospital on August 8 to remove cataract but there was no worm at the inspection of her eye at that time and it was on a later day, the worm was detected,” Dr. Pathirana said.

Source: DAILY NEWS
Author: Susil Ratnaweera and Kapila Somaratne