I-Team Investigations

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― Millions of people a day use contact lens solution and never think twice about it. But the CBS 3 I-Team is about to show you how consumers said one particular solution almost made them blind.

It was hard for Lisa Dodson to imagine what could have been causing her such excruciating pain. She said, "it felt like there were thousands of little pins that had been heated and sticking into my eye".

And Lisa Lavella explained what she went through, "it felt like a knife was going through my eye. It felt like the knife was stuck in my eye."

At first it was a mystery why either one of them came close to going blind. It was the uncertainty that scared them the most.

Lisa Lavella said, "I wasn't sure I had a future." The "crying, it's just been a nightmare," Lisa Dodson explained. "All those months, all that pain and it changed everything. It changed my whole life."

The two women - as the I-Team discovered - are now part of a group of a few hundred people who claim that their contact lens solution produced infections that led to near blindness for some and others to have corneal transplants.

Actress and comedian Andrea Martin, who starred in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," used the Bausch and Lomb product ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution. Martin claims she later experienced corneal damage including scarring and permanent vision loss.

ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution is the same product Lisa Dodson used. Dodson said, "if you could imagine taking a pin and sticking in your eye, that's what it felt the first day."

The condition only got worse when Dodson would lay down, which meant that for months she could not even go to sleep in her own bed. Dodson said, "I would sit up in my love seat and I would basically doze off and on. And that's all I did. The pain was so intense I couldn't do anything."

Philadelphia attorney Tom Kline represents Dodson and five others in separate lawsuits against Bausch and Lomb which recalled ReNu with MoistureLoc in May 2006.

Kline said instead of the contact lens solution guarding against infections it actually created them. "There was an additive in the Bausch and Lomb ReNu product," Kline claimed, "which actually led to the fungal infections."

Dr. Elisabeth Cohen, of Wills Eye Institute at Jefferson, said all re-usable contact lenses present problems for infections because of human and surface contact.

Cohen said that "the safest contact lens is a lens that's worn once and discarded. So a single use daily disposable contact is the safest soft lens."

But millions of people use contact lens solution every day and never suffer an infection. But in this case, some consumers allege, Bausch and Lomb is liable because it marketed a bad product.

Lisa Lavella wondered why this happened to her. She said she was traumatized and that she feels victimized by the company. But Lavella also thinks it is fortunate that the product did not claim more victims.

Lavella said, "the doctor said at one point, I was one day away from losing my eye. He said it was a good thing that I got there when I did."

Bausch and Lomb issued a statement to the I-Team explaining that "nearly 5 million consumers had used approximately 75 million bottles of MoistureLoc, yet there were fewer than 300 confirmed cases" of the serious infection.

The company said all of the cases are different and have individual circumstances.

The case brought by the actress Andrea Martin is expected to be one of the first to go to court.

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