Mississippi woman’s tooth helps restore vision

State News

September 19, 2009

Anonymous Picayune Item Sat Sep 19, 2009, 07:51 PM CDT

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.

Text Only

State News

Pardoned killer to fight return to Mississippi
A convicted murderer who left Mississippi after being pardoned by former Gov. Haley Barbour seems poised to fight attempts to force him to return from Wyoming. Joseph Ozment’s attorney, Robert Moxley, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he will defend Ozment’s freedom if he decides to try to stay in Wyoming.

February 3, 2012
Universities say financial aid fund running short
Recipients of state scholarships could see their aid packages trimmed unless the Mississippi Legislature puts more money into financial aid. That includes the more than 20,000 students who receive the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant.

February 3, 2012
Bad info infuriated kin of pardoned man’s victims
In another twist in the often confusing aftermath of pardons granted by former Gov. Haley Barbour on his way out of office, Mississippi corrections officials said Tuesday that victims’ relatives were given bad information by the state that fanned their outrage.

February 2, 2012
Bryant’s 1st Miss. budget carries ’lots of cuts’
Gov. Phil Bryant proposed Tuesday to cut state spending by $26 million to $5.49 billion in 2013 while also insisting on building $100 million in state reserves.
The newly inaugurated Republican summarized his first budget as a “lot of cuts,” saying he won’t raise taxes and that state revenues have yet to recover from the recession.

February 2, 2012
Miss. schools request more cash in lean budget
Mississippi’s top education official is asking for an additional $305 million for the coming year — a request he acknowledges is unlikely to be fulfilled. State Superintendent of Education Tom Burnham told House budget writers Tuesday that the biggest part of the request is $255 million to meet requirements of a complex funding formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program.

February 1, 2012
Major GOP ‘super PAC’ raised $51 million in 2011
American Crossroads, the Republican “super” political committee that plans to play a major role in this year’s presidential campaign, raised more than $51 million along with its nonprofit arm last year, The Associated Press has learned.

February 1, 2012
Miss. AG: Pardoned killer found in Wyoming
A convicted killer pardoned by former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was in Wyoming with his fiancee and tried to flee when he was found Sunday by investigators who served him with a court summons, authorities said Monday.

January 31, 2012
Experts: US ill-prepared for oil spill off Cuba
The U.S. is not ready to handle an oil spill if drilling off the Cuban coast goes awry but can be better prepared with monitoring systems and other basic steps, experts told government officials Monday.

January 31, 2012
Bryant salutes racial reconciliation group
Gov. Phil Bryant said he plans to continue activity with a Christian group promoting racial reconciliation.
Mission Mississippi honored Bryant Friday, hosting the Governor’s Prayer Luncheon at the Jackson Convention Center.

January 28, 2012
BP veiled spill rate: emails
On the day the Deepwater Horizon sank in the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials warned in an internal email conversation that if the well was not protected by the blow-out preventer at the drill site, crude oil could burst into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 3.4 million gallons a day, an amount a million gallons higher than what the U.S. government ultimately estimated spilled daily from the site.

January 28, 2012
More State News Headlines

State News

Search Results

Mississippi woman’s tooth helps restore vision

Site Map

Contact Us