Implanted tooth helps blind US woman recover sight

[Kadie]

Implanted tooth helps blind US woman recover sight

20 mins ago
MIAMI (AFP) – A 60-year-old US grandmother, blind for nearly a decade, has recovered her sight after surgeons implanted a tooth in her eye as a base to hold a tiny plastic lens, her doctors said Wednesday.

Sharron "Kay" Thornton, from the southern US state of Mississippi, lost her sight in 2000 when she came down with a case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare disease that scarred her cornea, according to the University of Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

For patients whose bodies reject a transplanted or artificial cornea, this procedure "implants the patient's tooth in the eye to anchor a prosthetic lens and restore vision," said Thornton's surgeon Victor Perez.

In the procedure -- which was pioneered in Italy but was a first in the United States -- the medical team extracted Thornton's canine or "eyetooth" and surrounding bone, shaved and sculpted it, and drilled a hole into it to insert an optical cylinder lens.

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Sharron Kay Thornton (L) talks with her lead surgeon Victor Perez, M.D. during a press conference to discuss the procedure used during surgery for her to regain sight in her left eye at the University of Miami Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida.
(AFP/Getty Images/Joe Raedle)