Miraculous eye surgery restores man's vision

TOOTH FOR AN EYE: Meet this man, who can now see after two decades of blindness, all with the help of a tooth.

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Keywords: Bombay Hospital, Eye Surgery

Mumbai: The world of medical science is strange and now it can't get stranger than this as — a tooth is used to restore a blind man's vision.

He maybe looking at life through tinted glasses but 50-year-old Bakridi Ansari is not complaining. Two decades of impaired vision and three failed transplants later he now has vision.

Ansari said, "It's like a second life, I feel like I have been reborn."

Bakridi's vision is the result of a very unusual surgery which would have cost him a couple of lakhs, except that it was done absolutely free of cost in this hospital in Mumbai. His tooth was used to restore vision in his left eye.

According to Consulting Eye Surgeon, Bombay Hospital Dr Sonia Nankani —"We used tooth as it provides a firm base for the prosthesis and is capable of growth and vascularisation, the body doesn't reject it."

This is how it's done— first a part of the inner lining of the cheek is inserted in the eye to provide a base, then a canine is extracted with a portion of the jaw and a hole drilled into it. A polymer crystal through which light can pass is then inserted into it.

The device is initially implanted below the eye to facilitate tissue growth before it is placed inside the eye after removing the patient's cornea and lens.

In India this kind of surgery is just a couple of years old but the results have been encouraging.

And there are as many as twenty documented cases of this procedure that was first conducted in Italy nearly 40 years ago.

Dr Nankani adds "People have seen up to seventy to eighty percent."

Bakridi meanwhile is taking his doctor's advice quite seriously and protecting his precious gift behind dark glasses.