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1 min readTWIL #043

TWIL #043 - Surgeons Fixed Blind Eyes Using the Patient's Own Tooth

When a cornea is too destroyed to transplant, surgeons carve a lens mount from the patient's own canine tooth and implant it directly into the eye socket - and it works.

  • #medicine
  • #biology
  • #surgery

The procedure is called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP), sometimes called "tooth-in-eye surgery." It sounds like science fiction but has been performed since 1963, when Italian ophthalmologist Benedetto Strampelli developed it for patients with no other surgical option.

Who needs it: OOKP is reserved for patients whose corneas are so severely damaged - usually by chemical burns, severe Stevens-Johnson syndrome, or repeated failed transplants - that a conventional corneal transplant will fail. In these cases, the eye's surface can no longer support a donor graft.

How it works:

  1. A canine tooth (and a section of surrounding jawbone) is extracted from the patient.
  2. The tooth root is precisely shaped into a small lamina. A hole is drilled through the centre and fitted with a polymethylmethacrylate optical cylinder (a plastic lens).
  3. The tooth-bone-lens assembly is then placed under the skin of the patient's cheek for 3–4 months. During this time, the body vascularises the tooth - growing blood vessels into it so it's no longer a foreign object.
  4. The surface of the damaged eye is reconstructed using buccal mucosa (tissue from the inside of the mouth).
  5. Finally, the tooth-bone-lens assembly is retrieved from the cheek and implanted into the eye, with the lens sitting in the optical axis. Cheek mucosa is stitched over the surface to form the new eye covering.

Why the tooth: The body does not reject its own tooth. Bone and root provide a stable, biocompatible scaffold with natural blood supply - something no synthetic implant has matched for long-term retention.

Results vary, but many patients regain functional vision after years or decades of total blindness. The procedure is performed at specialist centres in Italy, the UK, the US, and India.