Tooth implant restores a blind man's sight thanks to groundbreaking surgery
October 4, 2013, 11:18 am Yahoo!7
A blind man in the UK has undergone revolutionary surgery to restore his eyesight by having one of his teeth implanted into his eye.
Health
British man sees his family for the first time, revealed in heartwarming documentary
Ian Tibbetts, a former factory worker from the UK, began losing his sight in 1998 following an industrial accident that destroyed his cornea. After undergoing a groundbreaking procedure, known as osteo-odonto-keratoprothesis, or OOKP, Mr Tibbetts has spoken about seeing his four-year-old twin boys for the first time in a new BBC documentary The Day I Got My Sight Back.
After all other options to restore his sight had failed, Mr Tibbetts agreed to the radical surgery, which was conducted by Dr Christopher Liu, an opthalmic surgeon at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in the UK.
According to Dr Liu the procedure has a technical success rate of close to 100 per cent. He told The Independent, "The number of people who will see well for a very long time is two-thirds to three-quarters. If I am a bit more pessimistic I will say half to two-thirds."
The complex procedure is done in two stages. Firstly, the tooth and part of the jawbone are removed so that a small optical lens can be drilled into the tooth and then implanted under the eye socket and left to grow it's own tissue and blood supply.
Four months later, in stage two of the procedure, the cornea is removed from the eye and the tooth stitched in place in the eye socket. As documentary maker, Sally George, told The BBC, "The tooth is like a picture frame which holds this tiny plastic lens… and that acts as the new cornea".
Photo: Walker George Films
Mr Tibbetts' vision gradually returned weeks after having his bandages and stitches removed and is now at 40 per cent.
He described seeing his sons, Callum and Ryan, for the first time. He told The Independent, "I had a picture in my head of what they looked like but they were better. I'm a bit biased there. The image in my mind was totally different to how they were – the features. I gave them a big hug and a kiss."
