A woman's eye infection linked to recalled eyedrops took months to diagnose. How doctors identified the drug-resistant bacteria that caused her blindness.
How a rare type of bacteria infected and ultimately blinded Nancy Montz's left eye was a head-scratcher for Dr. Morgan Morelli, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases. The Ohio woman had been infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium resistant to most antibiotics. Morelli, chief fellow in the division of infectious diseases and HIV medicine at the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, had never seen this kind of bacteria in an eye. In fact, the particular kind of highly drug-resistant bacterium had never been reported in the United States. "We were racking our heads trying to figure out how this happened," she said. Montz, 72, of Perry, did not wear contacts — a common route for bacteria to enter the eyes. Last November, in chilly northeastern Ohio, she certainly hadn't been swimming in any nearby lakes, another potential source of unusual bacteria. "We thought that this was just some sort of freak accident," Morelli said. "We had no idea that this case was going to be linked to a global manufacturing issue." It took several months to confirm that Montz's infection had come from a contaminated bottle of EzriCare artificial tears, a product since linked to dozens of similar eye infections nationwide. Details of Montz's case were…