Doctors remove leech from woman's eyeball

SYDNEY - Doctors have removed a leech from a woman's eyeball, a medical journal reports.

The 66-year-old woman was gardening in the backyard of her suburban Sydney home when she accidentally flicked some moist soil and the leech into her left eye.

Her husband watched in alarm as the leech wriggled its way over her cornea, headed for safety and a feed via the eye's mass of delicate blood vessels.

"It was tucked up underneath her upper eyelid," emergency doctor Toby Fogg, who helped to remove the blood-sucking critter, told the journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

"Our little fellow started off at about half a centimetre and by the time we removed it it was about 2cm long - it had quite a good lunch."

Dr Fogg said tweezers and salt crystals were not suitable, so doctors turned to a hospital staple - saline solution.

"The leech rolled straight off, it just fell on to her cheek so we put it in a pot and gave it to her."

- AAP