Man, 34, has tooth implanted in eye to restore his vision – NBC Boston

Brent Chapman can see again after the doctors have taken out one of his teeth, flattened him, pierced a hole in it, placed a lens inside and implanted the tooth in one of his eyes.

It seems bizarre, but the complex functioning – known informally under the name of dental surgery – can help restore vision in patients with the most serious forms of corneal blindness.

“It seemed a bit scientific. I said to myself, “Who thought of that?” As if it’s so crazy, “said Chapman, 34, who lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia, says today.com about his first impression of the concept.

“Usually, the reaction is shock and surprise and the frank disbelief that it even exists,” said Dr. Greg Moloney, his eye surgeon and his ophthalmologist at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital from Providence Health Care in Vancouver.

The technique was developed in the 1960s, and Moloney believes that several hundred people worldwide have undergone the procedure.

It is for patients who have a healthy back of the eye, but who have undergone serious damage in front of the eye – the cornea – a chemical burn, a fire or an explosion or an autoimmune reaction where the immune system attacks the eye.

In these cases, doctors need a way to restore a clear window at the back of the eye – like changing a seriously damaged windshield in a car, says Moloney.

It turns out that a tooth with a lens implanted in the eye is the solution.

Sudden vision loss

Chapman was 13 years old when he lost his vision. He played in a high school basketball tournament, felt a little sick and took some analgesics of ibuprofen.

Until that time, Chapman had a potentially fatal skin reaction to the drug known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome.

In a coma for 27 days, Chapman recovered, but his eyes were affected forever. His left eye is irreversibly blind, while his right eye has undergone serious damage to the cornea.

He has spent the next 20 years traveling through the world to try different procedures to preserve any vision he had left, including 10 cornea transplants.

But they only worked for a short period.

“It was very devastating when I lost this vision again, so we could not continue to follow this route,” explains Chapman.

Damage to the surface of his eye was so serious that trying a corneal transplant was “like trying to plant a flower in a desert. He just won’t grow up, ”notes Moloney.

Chapman needed a prosthetic cornea and his tooth would do the work.

Why a tooth is used to restore vision

Humans have been trying for hundreds of years to understand how to put an artificial cornea on the front of an eyeball – the biggest problem is to make it stay in place so that the body does not reject it, notes Moloney.

The own tooth of a patient solves this problem.

It is a hard structure that can survive in this severe environment, and the body understands it as a part of itself, allowing it to set up, explains the doctor.

“It is a bridging fabric between the body and the plastic (lens) which concentrates the light,” explains Moloney.

“It’s like planting a cactus in the desert. This thing will survive and it will grow.”

The ideal candidate for teeth surgery in the eyes – officially known as osteo -twisting – is blind in both eyes of a disease that has affected the surface of the eye, but always has a healthy optic nerve and a retina.

Complex surgery

The first step in the two -step operation took place in February when Chapman had one of his teeth.

It had to be a healthy tooth which is “larger and then robust enough to hold the goal,” said Dr. Ben Kang, his oral surgeon, in Today.com.

He extracted one of the upper canine teeth of Chapman, then shaped it and flattened it with a forest to become rectangular.

A hole drilled in the middle of the structure made it possible to install the objective inside. It would serve as a clear window at the back of Chapman’s eye, but no longer had to be made.

The tooth was then put back in Chapman’s cheek and located in a fatty pocket under his eye for three months so that the body can push tissues around. Moloney would use it to sew and anchor the structure in front of the right eye of his patient.

This second stage of surgery took place in June.

Results that change life

After waking up, Chapman could see movements of the hand right away, but it took a few months for his eye to heal after surgery and that his vision clashes.

“We tried glasses and we had this moment when I was like, wow, ok, I see really well now,” recalls Chapman.

“Dr. Maloney and I established a visual contact, and it was quite emotional. I hadn’t really established a visual contact for 20 years. It was really euphoric. It was really fantastic.”

Chapman now has about 20/40 or 20/30 vision in this eye, says Maloney. He has problems with glare so he wears sunglasses, but calls surgery that changes life. Chapman can read, walk without cane and return to basketball.

Studies on people who have undergone teeth surgery in the eye show that the objective is functional and in place in 30 years is better than 90%, says Maloney. Chapman’s chance to keep its current level of vision in 30 years is around 50%.

Chapman is one of the first people in Canada to undergo surgery. In the United States, the first patient to undergo the procedure was a woman in the Mississippi in 2009.

The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami says it is the only center in the United States that performs surgery.

“It is a large and large surgery and a big step,” explains Chapman. “But it was just for me.”

This story appeared for the first time on today.com. More today: