Man In US Left With Stinger In Eye After Bee Attack

A man in the US was found to have been stung by a bee, in one of the most unfortunate spots - in his eye. And the bee stinger was found stuck in his right eye. According to a case study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the 55-year-old man from Philadelphia went to a local eye hospital complaining of "worsening vision and pain in his right eye". The man first went to the emergency department of a local hospital on the day of the sting, but the staff was unsuccessful in removing the bee sting entirely.

As per Newsweek, the man's vision and pain worsened dramatically, and the iris began to bleed. The man was not able to see at all from the injured eye, which prompted him to visit the ophthalmologic clinic.

"A man suffered a bee sting directly to his eye, resulting in an intense ocular inflammatory response which affected his vision," Wills Eye Hospital ophthalmologist Talia Shoshany told the outlet. "The patient reports walking by a bee hive at work and being stung. He was not otherwise tending to the bees."

The sting was found stabbed in his cornea, a key part of the eye that performs the initial refraction onto the lens, which further focuses the light onto the retina.

"On physical examination at the current presentation, vision in the right eye was limited to counting fingers," the doctors wrote in the paper.

It "showed conjunctival injection, inferior corneal edema [swelling of the cornea], and an infiltrate [collection of inflammatory cells] at the nasal limbus [region of the cornea] with a piece of retained stinger. A hyphema [blood collecting within the eye] which was attributed to iris trauma from the buried stinger and bleeding iris vessels, was also observed", the study further said.

The doctors removed the stinger fragment from his eye using hyper-precise tweezers.

Sting from a bee is extremely painful as it injects venom through its stinger into the skin. The venom contains proteins that affect skin cells and the immune system, leading to pain and swelling around the sting site.

"He improved with steroid and antibiotic drops, although eventually required both cataract surgery and a corneal transplant from the sequelae of the topical steroids and the toxic effect of the venom on the cornea. The patient fully recovered his vision after several months of treatment," Dr Shoshany said.