An Eye for a.....Tooth?
gweisman
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Friday, September 18, 2009
This story's all over the place. And for good reason. C'mon, who doesn't like a good story involving modified osteo-odonto-keatroprosthesis (MOOKP)??
Surgeons in Miami restored sight to a 60-year-old woman who had been blind for the last nine years. The surgeons removed a tooth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole, and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye. The first of its kind operation in the United States (limited availability in Europe and Asia) has restored Sharron "Kay" Thornton's vision to 20/70. She can now recognize faces and read a newspaper with a magnifying glass.
Thornton lost her vision nine years ago to Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. The disease destroys the cells on the surface of the eye which left Thornton's cornea scarred. Thornton wasn't a candidate for a cornea transplant or an artificial lens because the eye was so badly damaged by the reaction. Thornton's doctors at Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye Institute had previously tried a stem cell procedure to fix her vision.
That's when she was referred to Dr. Victor Perez, a cornea specialist at Bascom Palmer and professor of ophthalmology at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. Perez had trained under a doctor from Rome who developed a modified version of the tooth-lens procedure.
One of Thornton's canine was shaved and sculpted before implanting the tooth and lens into the skin. The tooth and lens are bonded to create one "bio-integrated" prosthetic unit, which was implanted under Thornton's skin.
In the meantime, an opthalmologist prepared the surface of the eye to receive the implanted prosthesis by removing scar tissue in and around the damaged cornea.
About a month later, the surgeons took mucous material from inside Thornton's cheek and used it to cover and rehabilitate the surface of the damaged eye.
Then, about two months after this, the surgeons removee the bio-integrated prosthetic unit (the bonded tooth and lens) from under Thornton's skin and implanted it in the eye, carefully alinging the unit to the centre of the eye. They make a hole in the mucosa for the prosthetic lens, which protrudes from the eye slightly so that light can enter.
MOOKP was first developed in Italy and is used to help patients with end-stage corneal disease or who have suffered damage to the cornea where severe scarring blocks vision and corneal transplants are no longer an option yet inside the eye everything is healthy and working properly, including the optic nerve.
Whoa!