LOOK away now if you're squeamish – particularly when it comes to your eyes.
Because grim photos show what happened when one man recently turned up to an eye clinic which a huge, white jellied mass covering his pupil and iris.
The 74-year-old told doctors that he'd had cataract surgery two years earlier.
Afterwards, he said he noticed a scar on his cornea gradually thickening over the coming months.
By the time he turned up to the clinic, he could barely see anything out of his right eye.
He could just about tell when docs were moving their hands in front of his eye.
'Corneal keloids' are super rare
They then performed a procedure to remove the mass and then examined some of the eye cells under a microscope.
Reported in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, docs found that the man had a "corneal keloid" – a rare type of lesion on the cornea (the clear, dome-shaped surface that covers the front of the eyeball).
Dr John Hovanesian, ophthalmologist and a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) told Live Science that a corneal keloid is so rare that over the past century, fewer than 100 cases have been reported.
Rare complication
And this man is even rarer because the issue tends to happen in younger people – generally up to the age of 30, he said.
Some people are born with the issue but it can also occur as a result of infection or trauma like having eye surgery.
Keloid scars are quite common skin complaints and they happen when the body over-compensates for a wound.
But eye keloids are completely different.
They're much rarer and people who are prone to developing skin keloids aren't prone to eye ones.
They're not the same as skin keloids
"We think they're very different diseases," Dr Hovanesian said.
"It's extremely rare to have this type of complication after eye surgery.
"Many ophthalmologists have never seen a corneal keloid because it's such a rare thing."
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As yet, experts are unclear about why eye keloids happen but the bloke in question has reported that he's doing well post-surgery.
He still can't see well enough out of his right eye to view an eye chart and he also has an abnormal growth of blood vessels in his eye and a cloudy cornea.
The report said that he's being monitored in case the lump grows back.
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