Published: September 19, 2009 07:50 pm      

Mississippi woman’s tooth helps restore vision

JACKSON — A Mississippi grandmother greeted by family she’d never seen arrived home Friday after becoming the first patient in the U.S. to have her vision restored through a procedure that implants a tooth in her eye.

“It’s unreal. It’s hard to even put into words,” said Kay Thornton, who lost her sight in 2000 to Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare condition that causes severe scarring of the cornea.

Her family in the tiny community of Smithdale in southwest Mississippi said it’s a new beginning for all of them.

“I just get chills thinking about it. I guess it’s like a rebirth,” Kelly Thornton said of her mother-in-law’s condition. “She can’t go back and relive the times when her grandkids were born. She missed out on that.”

Dr. Victor Perez led a team of surgeons at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami in the procedure, called modified osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis. Surgeons implanted Thornton’s eyetooth in her eye as a base to hold a prosthetic lens. The bandages were removed earlier this month.

Officials at Bascom Palmer said Thornton is the first successful case performed in the United States. Perez, a corneal specialist, said the procedure had been previously used in Europe.

In the procedure, doctors remove a tooth, then shave it and sculpt it before implanting it. A tooth is used because a patient’s body would reject an artificial base.

Perez said Thornton was a good candidate for the surgery because she could perceive light, indicating her optic nerve was functional.

“She was willing to take the risk of undergoing the procedure, understanding that there as a good chance it would not work and she could lose the eye. Her spirits were high,” Perez said Friday.

Now, Thornton can see, though not perfectly. Images are hazy.

However, she said that when the sun’s shining, “I can see wonderful.”

News of Thornton’s surgery has spread rapidly. Bascom Palmer has fielded several calls from people wanting to try the procedure, said Kyla Gordon, a hospital spokeswoman.

“We’ve had patients call who want to know if they’re candidates and they don’t have any teeth. We’ve had people call who don’t have any eyes. They’re not candidates,” Gordon said.

The procedure also isn’t used on patients suffering from common eye diseases including macular degeneration, glaucoma and retinal detachment.

In Thornton’s case, her blindness was caused by scarring, which prevented light from entering her eyes. The lens now brings light into the structure of her eye so she can see, said Gordon.

Thornton said when Perez initially told her about the surgery, her hope was mixed with a tinge of skepticism.

“I thought it was really weird,” she said. “Yesterday morning, I got to see how they were describing it for the first time on TV. I’m going ’Oh my gosh. That’s unreal.”’

The 60-year-old former restaurant manager said at one point during her blindness she had considered suicide even though her family and best friend, Rick Brister, were there to help with meals and other needs.

“I thought I was a burden,” she said.

Six years ago, a friend drove Thornton nearly 900 miles to Miami to begin a series of unsuccessful surgeries she hoped would restore her sight. Then she met Perez.

That journey ends on Sept. 28, when she returns to Bascom Palmer and Perez removes a guard on the eye that she currently has to look through.

Thornton said eyesight will give her a chance to more fully experience things she’s tried over the last several years with Brister.

“We’re going to try to retrace where we’ve been,” she said.