The terrifying trend of eyeball tattoos

Many things can go wrong with the process of eyeball tattooing. In the case of a young woman from Ottawa who wanted to change her scleral color to light purple, the body modification artist she chose made the mistake of not diluting the ink before he injected it. He also used the wrong sized needle. That led to complications including a tear in the conjunctival tissue which allowed the ink to slowly seep out. The woman suffered for weeks with eye pain and blurry, sometimes doubled, vision. She shared her story along with a picture of her crying a purple tear and it went viral. She hoped to educate others on complications that can occur from this procedure and wanted to warn them that if they are going to do it, they need to make sure the person performing it knows what they are doing.

Besides a rip in the conjunctiva, other mishaps while injecting can not only cause pain, but they can also perforate the globe (poke a hole in the eye), cause a traumatic cataract, instigate a retinal detachment or cause severe inflammatory responses inside of the eye such as endophthalmitis.