Doctors in Florida Restore Sharron Kay Thornton’s Vision by Implanting a Tooth in Her Eye

By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit

Sept. 17, 2009—

Forget about an eye for an eye — doctors in Florida have taken a
blind
woman’s tooth, and used it to help restore her vision.

A team of specialists at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine announced Wednesday that they are
the first surgeons in the United States
to restore a person’s sight by using a tooth. The procedure is formally called modified osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (or MOOKP).

Sharron “Kay” Thornton, 60,
went blind
nine years ago from a rare disorder called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. The disorder left the surface of her eyes so severely scarred she was legally blind.
But doctors determined the inside of her eyes were still functional enough that she might one day see with the help of MOOKP.

“This is a patient where the surface of the eye is totally damaged — no wetness, no tears,” said Dr. Victor L. Perez, the ophthalmologist at the Bascom
Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami who operated on Thornton. “So we kind of recreate the environment of the mouth in the eye.”

The three-phase operation started with University of Miami dentist, Dr. Yoh Sawatari, who removed a tooth from Thornton’s mouth and prepared an implant
of her own dental tissue for her
most severely damaged eye.
The tissue would be used to make a new cornea to replace the damaged one.

Doctors then removed a section of Thornton’s cheek that would become the soft, mucus tissue around her pupil. Finally, Perez and his team implanted the
modified tooth — which had a hole drilled through the center — to support a prosthetic lens.

“We use that tooth as a platform to put the optical cylinder into the eye,” explained Perez.

Perez said doctors often use less risky and less invasive techniques to replace corneas, but the damage from Thornton’s Stevens-Johnson syndrome ruled those
out.

Using a tooth might sound strange, but it also offers an advantage. Because doctors used Thornton’s own cheek and tooth tissue she faces less risk that
her immune system will attack the tooth and reject the transplant. Patients getting a cornea transplant from a deceased donor, on the other hand, face
chances that their immune system will reject the new tissue.

This Labor Day, Thornton was able
to take off the bandages
and she immediately saw the light.

Regaining Her Vision With Tooth in Eye Surgery

“From the first day, she’s been able to see 20/70,” said Perez. “She cannot drive legally (yet), but she can see her hands, see TV, see the sky, see the
clouds.”

At the moment, Thornton has nothing covering the cheek tissue on her eye, an aesthetic drawback MOOKP patients must face.

“Her eye looks different but, the goal is once she heals more we can put on a cosmetic eye shield,” said Perez.

The technique was developed in Italy in the early 1960s, but the original procedure has been modified over the years by doctors in Europe. Hundreds of people
in Japan, England and Italy have regained vision through the technique, but most eye specialists in the U.S. don’t foresee MOOKP catching on in America.

“It’s a complicated and rare procedure that a few people use in desperate situations [and] some patients benefit when the alternative is blindness,” said
Dr. Stanley Chang, an ophthalmologist at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

Why the Tooth and Eye Procedure Is Rare

While OOKP is used more often in Europe, doctors U.S. typically choose a less tedious technique called the Boston Keratoprosthesis, which is similar to
MOOKP but uses a prosthetic cornea instead of one grown from dental tissue and does not require cheek tissue to surround the implant.

The Boston technique, experts say, can save patients time and give them a more natural looking eye.

Doctors may use MOOKP for some uncommon situations — including people with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, or who were chemical burn victims — but not always.

“These conditions, although rare or uncommon, are still important because the patients may have little or no vision, and because there have not been very
effective treatments to restore their vision,” said Dr. James Chodosh, a cornea specialist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

However, Chodosh added, “The [MOOKP] procedure is unlikely to be very commonly used because of the difficulty, length, and invasiveness of the surgery and
the cosmetic appearance after surgery.”

Rare Procedures to Reverse Blindness Still Have Benefits

Dr. Uyen Tran, associate professor of ophthalmology at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, agrees that “these types of patients are not common” and says that
“we probably see about 20 cases a year at our center.”

Yet, while the number of patients for MOOKP may never reach the number of patients getting the Boston Keratoprosthesis, Perez said he hopes to perform more
of these procedures for those in need.

“Absolutely there are a lot of patients like her (Thornton), and also patients with chemical burns& we also want to work with the Department of Defense
to help with soldiers who are scarred,” said Perez.

The police arrested the 45 year-old man and charged him with burglery.  The legally blind man who kicked in the door has no vision in his left eye and limited vision in his right.

So you see, it just goes to show that those who are blind, or visually challenged in any way can and do defend their sighted peers from harm.  That was a very corageous act and could have ended up much worse, especially for the blind man who had kicked in the door of that apartment.  What if the guy had a gun, or had attacked the blind man instead?  Woosh! that was offly close!  Tht could have ended up a real disaster.

So please, whatever you do; be very careful when approaching anything that is out of the ordinary because it could be dangerous for you in the end.  That guy survived, but it could have been much worse for him if the 45 year-old man had other motives other than raping the woman.  However, nevertheless, the blind man was recognized as a hero, and should be treated as such because after all; he did save the woman’s life from harm.

This just goes to show the daredevil in many blind and visually impaired people who want to do something that usually requires a lot of vision.  Who knows, maybe some day, blind people may fly airplanes, and spaceships.

Blind people sometimes don’t get enough credit for what they do because the sighted world seams to think that they can’t do something until they’re proven wrong by the blind themselves, and this situation is no acception.  Ok, so he can’t drive on a busy highway, that that still doesn’t discredit the fact that he did drive a car, and very fast I might add.  After all, blind people ski, go cannooing, and much much more than what the sighted world wants to acknowledge.

Some of us are indeed daredevils, and that’s really good because it pushes us  out of our comfort zones and it lets us really explore our world and experience it to the fullest.

It is legal for a blind person to own a car.

The first time the owner was stopped, a 16-year old boy (without a driver’s permit) was guiding the driver. The second time the driver had 3 fellow passengers in the car and they were giving him instructions.

The car was being driven in an erratic manner which led to the police stopping the vehicle.

Read the entire story here:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22248263-5002700,00.html