A holidaymaker who collided with a school of fish while swimming at a Red Sea beach later suffered problems with a swollen and droopy eyelid, which was still causing him problems four weeks later.
An imaging test showed a granola in the 52-year-old man’s eyelid — but when doctor’s removed it during surgery they also removed what were described as “two transparent tubular structures”.
Dr. Wolf A. Lagrèze, of the Department of Ophthalmology at Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg in Germany, who treated the man, said he was absolutely surprised to discover the foreign bodies in his eye.
They were later identified by an expert as the jawbones of a halfbeak — a member of the family Hemiramphidae, which are mostly surface-dwelling fish common in shallow and coastal waters, including the Red Sea.
The patient made a full recovery following the operation, according to the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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