How Rubbing Your Eyes Can Lead to Vision Loss

21-year-old Muhammad Zabidi from Malaysia made headlines after losing his vision due to rubbing his eyes and subsequently undergoing corneal transplant surgery.

Since he was little, Zabidi had a habit of rubbing his eyes until they turned red due to allergies. As he grew older, this habit caused a severe issue, blurring the vision in his right eye by the time he was 15, and it continued to worsen over time.

Zabidi was horrified to hear during his hospital appointment that he had severely scratched his cornea from rubbing his eyes and that he would now require a new cornea to see again.

“I’ve always rubbed my eyes because I have allergies,” Zabidi shared on a Tiktok video. “I used to rub them until they were red. I was fifteen when I began to have blurry vision. It grew worse with time, and by the time I was 21, my cornea was scarred.”

Zabidi recently underwent corneal transplant surgery to replace his damaged cornea with a new one.

“My condition is now stable, but I still can’t open my right eye. The doctor told me it could take two months for my eye to open, and it could take two years for a complete recovery,” Zabidi shared. Many people in Malaysia resonated with his video, while most were shocked to learn that rubbing one’s eyes could lead to a corneal transplant. They wished Zabidi a swift recovery.