Abstract

45 year old male experienced sudden painful loss of vision in the right eye during his MRI spine for backache.Ocular exam revealed dense vitreous hemorrhage-Bscan and CT orbit confirmed intraocular foreign body. On history taking patient gave history of traumatic cataract extraction & intraocular lens 20 years ago secondary to injury while welding iron rod and had quiet eye for more than 2 decades.
As an emergency he underwent Vitrectomy,removal of 3X2 mm metallic foreign body which was found to be ferromagnetic during surgery. Surprisingly,he didn't have Siderosis.We decided to perform metallurgical analysis using scanning electron microscopy & energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy which showed predominant ferrous component.However the metal piece had central core of Iron surrounded by carbon,sulfur,chloride & Oxygen.These trace elements had engulfed the central ferrous material and not letting the ionisation to occur thus preventing Siderosis which was confirmed by a normal ERG.