OPERATION YA KWANZA KWA KIPOFU

Sharron Kay Thornton (60) with a press conference in the clinic „Bascom Palmer Eye institutes“. There an eyetooth with artificial lens was implanted to her in the left eye – for the first time in the USA

Dental implant in the eye lets blind woman see again This sensation-OP in the USA lets visually impaired hope: For the first time a tooth preserved with a lens was implanted to a blind woman in the eye.

Sharron Kay Thornton (60) could already see few hours after the operation recognising faces and objects. In the meantime, she can read even again – only two weeks after the intervention, as her doctors informed in Miami. Thornton: „I could hardly expect to see my seven grandchildren whom I did not know yet.“ The patient had gone blind nine years ago after a rare illness. The fact that she can see again, is „really a miracle“. The intervention is valid for patient whose body pushes off an artificial cornea, as the last possibility to regain the ocular light. Indeed, must be intact for it the inside structure of the eye and the visual nerve. Thornton an eyetooth was removed with root and surrounding bone. The doctors preserved the tooth then in such a way that a lens could be used in a bored hole. This implant method was applied for the first time in Italy in the 60s. Thornton is the first patient in the USA with whom this intervention was carried out.