A 42-year-old woman, who has not been named, spent 28 years with a contact lens lodged inside her eye, according to an extraordinary case published by the British Medical Journal.
Both the patient and her mother thought the contact lens had been knocked out during a badminton game when she was hit in the eye with a shuttlecock at the age of 14.
She presumed it fell out of her eye, but instead the lens moved inside.
"We concluded that the lens migrated into the eyelid following trauma and was dormant for 28 years," stated the case report.
"The patient was wearing an RGP [Rigid Gas Permeable] contact lens at the time, which was never found,” the report said.
Doctors stressed that the lens caused no obvious symptoms for many years.
Dr. Sirjhun Patel, one of the authors of the report who is a specialist registrar in ophthalmology, dubbed the case an "exceptional scenario."
"I would like to reassure patients that contact lenses are safe when used appropriately," he said.
The article was written by Dr Sirjhun Patel and his eye specialist colleagues, Lai-Ling Tan and Helen Murgatroyd.
