A man’s itchy eye turned out to be a severe problem when he discovered a fly had placed over a dozen eggs within.

The unnamed Frenchman, who is apparently 53 years old, was brought to the University Hospital of Saint-Etienne after experiencing a persistent discomfort in his right eye. Doctors at the hospital performed a short check of his right eye and were astounded by what they discovered.

The eye exam revealed “more than a dozen mobile, transparent larvae” surrounding the cornea, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the man informed the doctors that he had been gardening near a horse and sheep farm the same day when he felt something enter his eye.

Once the issue was detected, physicians used forceps to manually remove all of the larvae from the man’s eye one by one.

More larvae were discovered inside the conjunctiva, the membrane protecting the eyelid, and the white regions of the eye by the doctors.

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The experts recognised the tiny organisms as Oestrus ovis (also known as the sheep bot fly) larvae after successfully retrieving them.

The individual was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis after the surgery. The experts at the University Hospital of Saint-Etienne described the condition as “an invasion of the outer structures of the eye by fly larvae.”

If larvae go into the eye, they can’t be readily removed. Washing the eyes doesn’t make much of a difference. The only method to remove them, according to specialists, is to manually pick them out of the eye using forceps.

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Any other way may be dangerous due to the insects’ ‘oral hooks,’ which they utilise to stick to the cornea.

In this situation, the individual was fortunate because the larvae were only in one of his eyes. A follow-up session with the physicians revealed that he had fully healed.