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Son’s tooth for an eye restores dad’s sight
PIONEERING surgery which sees a human tooth implanted into a patient’s
eye has given an Irish man back his sight after spending two years haunted
by blindness.
Robert McNichol, who lost his vision in an industrial accident, received
ground-breaking treatment at the Sussex Eye Hospital this year, which
involved his 23-year-old son’s tooth being fitted into his eye.
The tooth, usually a canine, was removed from the young man’s jaw
and fitted with an artificial lens before being inserted into the 57-year-old’s
eye socket.
The expensive transplant procedure, which was performed by Dr Christopher
Liu and is called Osteo-odonto-keratoprothesis or OOKP, is only employed
when all other treatment fails.
Its success has fully restored the delighted father’s sight.
Until this point Mr McNichol, of Ballahy in Co. Sligo, had given up hope
of ever seeing again after undergoing failed treatments at home in Sligo
General Hospital and later in Galway. |
