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Doctors Use Tooth To Give Blind Woman Eyesight [Video]

Posted by ChasinDatPaper on September 17, 2009 at 12:00pm
See Video Of This Amazing Story After The Break Baltimore Sun Reports MIAMI - -- A 60-year-old woman blind for nine years has regained useful vision following a rare operation in which surgeons removed one of her teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye. It's the first such operation in the United States, they said. With 20/70 vision now, Sharron "Kay" Thornton of Smithdale, Miss., can recognize faces and read a newspaper with a magnifying glass, and she should get better vision once fully healed and fitted with glasses, doctors say. "We're excited. We believe a lot of patients can benefit from this," said Dr. Victor Perez, cornea specialist at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of Miami, where the procedure was performed. Thornton lost her vision nine years ago to Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a severe allergic reaction to medication that blistered and scarred her cornea, the convex part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil. She was not a candidate for a corneal transplant or an artificial plastic lens because the eye was too damaged, Perez said. Thornton was referred to Perez, who trained in Rome under ophthalmologist Giancarlo Falcinelli. He developed a version of the tooth-lens procedure invented by Dr. Benedetto Strampelli in 1963. In the Miami operation, Thornton's eyetooth was chosen because it had a good amount of jawbone and ligament attached, which are crucial for it to stay alive and heal into the eye after being implanted, Perez said. The eyeteeth -- also called canines -- get their name because they sit in the mouth directly beneath the eyes. The multistage procedure began when Dr. Yoh Sawatari, a dental surgeon, extracted Thornton's eyetooth, shaved it flat horizontally, drilled a hole in it and inserted an acrylic lens. He implanted the tooth/lens prosthesis under the skin beneath her clavicle for three months so the combination could heal together. Meanwhile, an eye surgeon removed scar tissue lining her damaged cornea. A month later, surgeons removed a patch of skin from the inside of her cheek and laid it over her cornea to replace the moist tissue lost to the disease. Thornton now is looking forward to seeing her three grown children and nine grandchildren for the first time in nine years.
Tags: Blind, Doctors, Eyesight, Give, To, Tooth, Use, Woman
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