Black Spot on Iris

[Randydandyy]

This morning I woke up with mild irritation in my eye. Upon further inspection I noticed a black line that runs along the edge of my iris. Is this something common? What could this be?

[SoftwareDeveloper]

If you are having trouble getting an appointment with an opthalmologist this week, if you are in the US you can consider an optometrist since they are often easy to get into quickly, mine often has  walk in appointments,  and cheaper. In the US optometrists have a fairly broad scope of practice related to basic eye health and can handle most common  eye issues, especially things related to contacts and common eye irritations. They can't do surgery and aren't MDs so if the issue may something other than the eye which is merely impacting the eye, then you'll wind up at an ophthalmologist, as you would also with more complicated issues. I'd guess the  odds are this is something they can handle.  Outside the US their scope of practice varies quite a bit, in some countries they aren't much more than opticians and aren't general eye doctors (this is a global site, even if most are from the US).  Ideally its good to find an optometrist that knows their limits and you are confident  will refer to an ophthalmologist if really needed.

[JohnHaganMD]

Most times in a young healthy person this ends up due to the contacts.
JCH MD

[Randydandyy]

Thanks for the feedback. It is possible that I just noticed it, but I am not taking any chances, I'm trying to get an appointment this week. No olders photos to compare it to though. As of now, I still have mild irritation in the eye. I do wear contacts and am a bit careless with taking them out every night.

I'll post again after a visit with an ophthalmologist.

[JohnHaganMD]

To SD  thanks for the information

[SoftwareDeveloper]

I don't know if you've looked at the full size version of the image, though I'm suspecting  you may have and that still might not be enough. If you click on the picture it does show it larger, but that still isn't the largest size. Once you've done that to see a somewhat larger version, at least in the chrome browser there is a right-click menu item to view the image by itself in another tab (and you can use the browser "view" menus or shortcut keys to zoom in) or you could copy the image URL and view it by itself, or download the image.

It seems possible the quality still isn't enough for you, that a doctor needs to look at it in person from different angles. As a layperson to me it does look like there might be something odd there, the question is whether the poster has older pictures to be sure it wasn't there in the past and they just didn't notice. It seems  is possible its just normal variation in the iris coloring and perhaps was just noticed for the first time due to the existence of irritation which led to looking closer at the eye than normal. You'll notice at the bottom of the iris some darker shading in parts for instance the coloring does vary around the edge (and of course lighting may play a part).

[JohnHaganMD]

I'm sorry the resolution is not clear enough to offer you any suggestion of a DX.  If you wear contacts leave them out. If your eye is still irritated tomorrow see an Eye MD ophthalmologist or optometrist
JCH MD