MIAMI — A 60-year-old woman blind for nine years has regained useful vision following a rare operation in which surgeons removed one of her teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye. It’s the first such operation in the U.S., they said.
With 20/70 vision now, Sharron “Kay” Thornton, of Smithdale, Miss., can recognize faces and read a newspaper with a magnifying glass, and should get better vision once she is fully healed and fitted with glasses, doctors say.
She lost her vision to Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a severe allergic reaction to medication that blistered and scarred her cornea, the convex part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil.
Thornton now is looking forward to seeing her three grown children and nine grandchildren for the first time in nine years.
