Man who squeezed spot above eye almost loses sight

'If I had left it much longer it could have spread to the orbit and blinded me'

Popping a spot almost led to sight loss for one man (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A man has told how he almost lost his sight after squeezing a spot above his eye.

Harmless-looking pimples can actually provide germs with a gateway into the body when squeezed.

Germs living on the surface - such as those which cause MRSA - can even cause blindness, as one Reddit user recently discovered.

“I had a pimple in my eyebrow that was annoying me and I decided to squeeze it," wrote Class0naught. "This seemed to work at the time, but the next day it had grown back twice as big.

"Turns out by squeezing the pimple I forced the infection deeper and ended up with periorbital cellulitis. If I had left it much longer it could have spread to the orbit and blinded me."

A doctor had initially reassured him that the spot above his eye was a sebaceous cyst, and prescribed him antibiotics to treat it.

But half a day later, the spot had tripled in size and the man was struggling to see out of his eye.

“The doctor … said I could go to the hospital ‘if I wanted’," he wrote.

But he quickly realised how serious the pimple was when arrived at the hospital and medical staff “freaked” and hooked him up to an IV drip of antibiotics.

By squeezing the pimple, he had pushed MRSA inside his body and into the skin around his eye, causing the condition known as periorbital cellulitis.

To save his sight, hospital staff operated on the man under general anaesthetic. Luckily, the infection was treated and he waited for the swelling to go down before he could be discharged from hospital.

Class0naught’s story has been met with shock online. User Rocks_and_such wrote they had a similar infection said it was one of the most painful experiences of their life.

User maybe_little_pinch added: “This happened to a coworker of mine, but it wasn't a normal pimple. It was MRSA."

“If you have a zit that does something weird like this, get it swabbed for staph," maybe_little_pinch wrote of the infection staphylococcus. "I've had two staph bubbles that looked like normal acne. I work in a hospital and get exposed more than the average bear...”

MRSA is a form of bacteria that is particularly dangerous as it is resistant to a number of widely available forms of antibiotic. Those who work with a large number of people, have an open wound or other entry point, and have health issues that undermine their immune system are most at risk of being infected, according to the NHS.