Copper foreign body in the lens without damage of iris and lens capsule

The objective is to report a rare case of asymptomatic penetrating injury with a copper foreign body found during an examination for cataract surgery.

A case report.

A 73-year-old woman had vision loss. Examination by pupil dilation disclosed a dark-brown metallic mass located under the anterior capsule of the lens, as well as nuclear sclerosis of the lens. Although no history of traumatic injury was reported by the patient, careful examination revealed a dot corneal opacity. This finding, and the past history of the patient that she had worked in the fabrication of copper wire, suggested previous penetrating injury. The iris had no scar. No inflammatory reaction was observed in the posterior segment of the eye. Phacoemulsification and implantation of an intraocular lens were performed. After continuous curvilinear capsulorrhexis (CCC), the foreign body was extracted with a microforceps. The anterior capsule overlying the foreign body was intact, with normal light reflex. Qualitative analysis showed that the foreign body extracted contained pure copper at the center. Nevertheless, visual acuity of the right eye improved from 20/50 to 20/20 without any copper-related retinal damage.

In this case, copper localized under the anterior capsule of the lens had been able to stay in the eye without causing severe inflammatory reaction.