The faint cuts in the woman’s eyeball look like spokes on a bicycle wheel, or a poorly-sliced pizza — numerous thin lines arranged to form a radial pattern. But these cuts aren’t due to some kind of new eyeball tattooing. They are the result of a once popular, but now outdated, eye surgery the patient had years ago to correct her nearsighted vision, according to a new report of the case.

Doctors spotted the odd-looking incisions during a relatively recent eye exam. The 41-year-old woman had told the eye doctors that her vision had gotten progressively worse over the past two decades, according to the report, published yesterday (Jan. 23) in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The exam revealed 16 incisions in a radial pattern on her cornea — the clear, dome-shaped surface that covers the front of the eyeball. These incisions are hallmarks of a type of eye surgery known as a radial keratotomy. Indeed, the patient confirmed she’d had this surgery 23 years earlier, according to the report, led by Dr. Muralidhar Ramappa of LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India.

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