[Benjamin]

Tooth Is Implanted in 34-year-old’s Eye to Restore His Vision After Two Decades

There’s an old Babylonian/Biblical legal maxim that goes, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

For Canadian Brent Chapman, his new maxim is “a tooth for an eye,” because he has become the first in his country ever to receive an osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis.

If your Latin is on point, you’ll realize that translates to a tooth-in-eye prosthetic—literally Chapman’s tooth has been surgically implanted into his eye to act as a lens fixture which has enabled him to see again.

It’s considered a last resort, and after 50 surgical transplants and procedures, that’s where Chapman was alongside his dedicated ophthalmological surgeon Dr. Greg Moloney, who has been putting Chapman under the knife since he was a teenager.

Now 34, Brent suffered a rare reaction to ibuprofen at age 13 that left severe burns on his cornea. The cornea acts like a windscreen, keeping debris and liquids out of the eyeball while allowing light to penetrate and reach the retina and optic nerve, but the burns permanently obscured the vision in his right eye while his left was lost entirely to infection.

The tooth-in-eye surgery is rare; very rare—so rare that despite being pioneered in the 1960s Chapman’s procedure is the very first ever done in Canada. According to Dr. Moloney, it’s turned to when all other options have already been tried and failed, or the initial damage to the cornea is so substantial that ophthalmologists know there’s no chance conventional replacements or grafts will succeed.

The tooth is chosen because it’s made of the hardest material produced by the body. A hole is drilled through the canine tooth and a hi-tech lens is fitted inside. The tooth is then attached to the cheek through the eye, and an aperture to the retina and optic nerve is created so that the light can enter the lens and reach it.

With glasses Chapman has about 20/30 vision, meaning at 20 feet he can see clearly what someone with perfect vision can see at 30.

Dr. Moloney spoke with CNN about the procedure, the bizarre sense in it, and the effect it has on people.

“The tooth is a really ideal structure for holding a focusing element in place. It’s hard, it’s rigid, it survives in poor environments, and the body accepts it because it’s part of its own,” said the corneal surgeon from the University of British Columbia. “It’s like watching people come out of a time capsule and reintroduce themselves to the world, it’s very emotional for us.”

Chapman agreed.

“It’s really indescribable, to be able to see the whole city and how there’s a whole world that’s just intersecting,” said the professional massage therapist, looking out at Vancouver from Moloney’s office on the 16th floor.

He can’t wait to “not make everything about me,” go to Japan, and not have to worry about plans falling through or piling various medications and emergency contacts into his luggage and phone in case his vision fails again.

“It was so unpredictable, I would make these plans, and it would be heartbreaking when I couldn’t do them,” he told CNN.

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/toot...r-two-decades/