Two worms measuring 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) were removed from an eye of a 64-year-old Indian woman by doctors in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the Press Trust of India reported Saturday.
Doctors at the Malabar Eye Hospital and Research Centre pulled out the worms in an operation conducted on the woman identified only as Amina on Friday, the news agency said.
Amina had been admitted to hospital complaining of pain and irritation in her eyes.
K. S. Chandrakanth, a doctor who supervised the operation told PTI that he had seen "something moving" in Amina's right eyeball soon after she came into the hospital.
"The filarial worms had made their way to the lymphatic vessels and were about to migrate to other parts of her body," he said. "Had the worms gone deeper, she would have probably lost her eyesight," Chandrakanth said, adding that Amina had been discharged from hospital. He speculated that the worms' larvae might have entered Amina's bloodstream through mosquitoes and had reached the eye through the blood vessels in the fully grown state.