upworthy

visual impairment

Health

Impossible-sounding surgery cures blindness by implanting a patient's own tooth in their eye

"Tooth-in-eye" surgery sounds like something out of science fiction, but it permanently restores vision in 94% of patients.

Canva Photos

You have to see it to believe it.

About 12 million people in the United States live with significant visual impairment. About a million of those people live with blindness. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for blindness. Therapies exist to slow vision loss, and some vision loss can be improved with treatment, but complete vision loss has proved to be a very tough nut for scientists to crack, in part because there are so many different potential causes of blindness.

Medical researchers have and continue to look into lots of diverse options, including stem cell therapies, gene therapies, bionic eyes, and now...teeth. Yes, you read that right. Teeth.

A 33-year-old man recently became the first person in Canada to have their sight restored by a rare and outrageous-sounding procedure: Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, or OOKP.

OOKP has been around since the 1960s and has been performed around the globe, but is still relatively rare overall. Invented by Professor Benedetto Strampelli, the procedure is better known by its easy-to-remember, and fairly gross, nickname: "Tooth-in-eye surgery." Why in God's name is it called that? Buckle up if you're squeamish. Here's how it works:

gif of man buckling seatbeltBuckle up; this is going to be wild. Giphy

First, a tooth is removed from the patient. A small rectangular section of the tooth is shaved off and a hole is drilled in the middle of it. Imagine cutting a small circle out of the middle of a sheet of paper.

Then, a small plastic lens is inserted into the hole, almost like a window covering or a makeshift camera lens. The section of tooth acts like a frame to hold the new lens.

OK, now for the really wild part: The rectangular shaving of tooth, complete with plastic lens, is then embedded into the patient's cheek in order to grow new tissue and blood vessels. It will stay there for around two months while the new tissue develops.

The tooth is then removed from the cheek and surgically embedded into the patient's eyeball, effectively replacing the damaged cornea. The new eye is pink and bloodshot in appearance, and a little bulbous, with only a small block hole as an iris. But, miraculously, it works!

The patient's own teeth are used to prevent the body rejecting foreign tissue or materials. Tooth-in-eye surgery only works for vision loss caused by corneal damage, or damage to the surface of the eyes. It won't heal or replace the optic nerve or retina, so it's not a miracle cure for all forms of blindness. It also comes with some risks, but when it works, it works. One study showed that 94% of successful cases still had good eyesight almost 30 years later, with some formerly blind patients seeing well enough to drive cars.

The Canadian man became blind at the age of 13 after a terrible autoimmune reaction to ibuprofen. After dozens of surgeries and therapies, OOKP was his last-ditch effort to permanently restore his sight. Other treatments had helped but his sight would fade away over time. For now, his story is a massive success that doctors are hoping will inspire others to give the controversial procedure a try.

The video below shows the procedure and its aftermath:


@garcidltth1

#popularscience #knowledge #fyp #tiktok

We have to keep funding bizarre, off-the-beaten-path scientific research.

This sounds like one of those wacky things you'd see in the news and say, "Why are we spending millions of dollars trying to see if we can grow new eyeballs from teeth?!" But without critical and creative research like this, we'd be no further in treating conditions like blindness. A version of OOKP was performed successfully in the United States at The University of Miami in 2009.

Amazing medical breakthroughs can come from the strangest places. Fascinating discoveries have been made by making people drink their own blood and monitoring the effects, studying the chemical makeup of goose poop, and looking for answers in tree bark, snake venom, and rat poison.

Cheers to Professor Benedetto Strampelli, and his weird but effective stroke of inspiration.

From Your Site Articles
medicine
Most Shared

The amazing reason that medals at the Paralympics make a sound when you shake them.

At the Olympic Games, you can see what victory looks like.

Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images

At the Paralympic Games, you can hear it too.

Amanda McGrory, Tatyana McFadden, and Chelsea McClammer of the United States after competing in the women's club throw. Photo by Lucas Uebel/Getty Images.

For the first time, winning Paralympic athletes are receiving medals filled with tiny steel balls, which allow champions with visual impairment to experience their wins aurally — by shaking them.

U.S. swimmer Bradley Snyder listens to his gold medal. Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images.

The number of balls increases by place — 16 for bronze, 20 for silver, and 28 for gold — so that the medals each make a different sound.

"Our hope, and I think it's the Olympic Committee's hope too, is that this becomes the style," Victor Hugo Berbert, the manager overseeing the medal's sound feature, told the International Business Times. "That the next games bring other sensory elements for the athletes and that this might carry on."

Though Paralympic medals have featured braille before, the shakeable medal is an attempt to make the games even more accessible to all athletes with disabilities.

The pre-cursor to the modern Paralympics — then called the Stoke-Mandeville Games — first took place in London in 1948. The athletes, mostly disabled World War II veterans, had to be in wheelchairs to compete.

By the time the Paralympic Games were officially founded in 1960, visually impaired competitors, amputees, paraplegics, and persons with cerebral palsy still couldn't participate. Paraplegic athletes were first included in 1968 and after 16 years of organizing and lobbying — led by the International Sport Organization for the Disabled and its 16 affiliated countries — the games finally granted inclusion to blind and amputee athletes in 1976, and athletes with cerebral palsy in 1980.

Since 1992, the games have been hosted in the same city as the Olympics to foster a sense of equality between the two events.

A representative for the games told PRI that athletes have been referring to the rattling of the medal as the "sound of victory."

Lynda Hamri of Algeria shakes her bronze medal. Photo by Lucas Uebel/Getty Images.

For winners with vision loss and their competitors, it's a hugely welcome development.

But don't worry, champions: They still taste like victory too.

Eva Berna of Czech Republic, after winning bronze in the women's shot put.

From Your Site Articles
More

How Facebook is helping your friends with visual impairments 'see' photos.

Facebook wants every one of its users to feel connected.

Last October, Facebook announced it had found a way to make its platform more accessible for users with visual impairments. Today, the company has done just that.

It's all thanks to the fine folks on Facebook's Accessibility Team.

Image description: Matt King is on the left, Jeff Wieland is in the middle, and Shaomei Wu is on the right. Together, they make up Facebook's Accessibility Team. Photo courtesy of Facebook, used with permission.

The team, which took shape about five years ago with a goal of making the social media giant useable for everyone, celebrated the launch of automatic alternative text on April 5, 2016. The feature looks like it'll be a game-changer for the more than 39 million Facebook users who are blind and the 246 million users who have severe visual impairments.

Facebook is using artificial intelligence to describe photos aloud to those users. This way, users who are blind can "see" what's happening in their newsfeeds.

Many users who are blind or have visual impairments use screen readers, which read aloud the text a user is scrolling past. Previously, when screen readers would come upon a Facebook image, the technology would only be able to voice the word, "photo."

Now, automatic alternative text can scan the image, decipher what's in it — an object? A person? A landscape? — and provide a rough description.

So, in this pic of a smiling couple on a mountain hike with a beach behind them, for example, a user would hear, "image may contain two people smiling, sunglasses, sky, outdoor, water."

Image description: An iPhone screenshot of a photo showing a couple on a hike near a beach. Photo courtesy of Facebook, used with permission.

Or in this photo of a pizza, a user would hear, "pizza, food."

Image description: An iPhone screenshot of a photo of an olive and pepperoni pizza. Photo courtesy of Facebook, used with permission.

The new feature's rollout isn't universal yet. Currently, only those on iPhones and iPads can use it, but Facebook says it's expanding to other platforms soon.

So if you're on one of those devices and interested in checking it out, simply go into your Settings, select "general" and "accessibility" to turn it on. Alternately, you can ask Siri to "turn on VoiceOver," which is an iOS feature that allows automatic alternative text to do its thing.

The audio descriptions may not be all that creative. But they can still make a profound difference for those with impaired vision.

In a video announcing the new feature, Facebook shared reactions from people using it for the first time.

“I feel like I can fit in," one user said. "There’s more I can do.”

GIF of a person saying, "I love it, you have no idea. This is amazing," in regards to Facebook's new feature. GIF via Facebook/Vimeo.

Another user explained how the simple description makes her feel connected to the larger world.

GIF of a person saying, "That makes me feel included. Like I'm a part of it too." GIF via Facebook/VImeo.

Facebook's new feature is a huge step forward. But there are ways you too can help friends on social media who are visually impaired.

The simplest (but most effective) thing you can do is always include descriptive captions on all of your Facebook photos. This way, when visually impaired users are using screen readers, they'll be able to hear how you've captioned the picture (on top of hearing the brief description created by automatic alternative text).

So if you snapped this selfie...

Image description: Here's a happy woman outside in the snow, giving the peace sign with her fingers. Image via iStock.

...you'd probably want your caption to read more along the lines of, "Can you tell how excited I am about our snow day by the way I'm giving a peace sign out on the sidewalk?" instead of, say, "OMG, yes."

Those of you on Twitter can also make the Twitterverse a more welcoming place for the visually impaired by changing your settings to allow your photos to come with descriptions — a new feature the network announced just last week. That way, users with screen readers can hear your description of the photo.

Sure, this option is less game-changing than Facebook's new feature because Twitter users have to elect to change their settings and then make sure to add descriptions manually. But still, it's progress.

Facebook's new feature won't transform the user experience for everyone. But for those it will effect, this is big.

“That whole saying of a picture being worth a thousand words, I think it’s true," one of the users trying out Facebook's new feature said. "But unless you have somebody to describe it to you — even having three words — just helps flesh out all the details that I can’t see."

Now, a picture can be worth a thousand words for everyone. Job well done, Facebook.

You can watch users with visual impairments experience Facebook's new feature for the first time below:

More

He wanted his blind daughter to be able to hunt Easter eggs. So he got creative.

11-year-old Rachel Hyche has been blind since she came home from the hospital.

"Rachel rides horses, watches movies, drives a golf cart, roller skates, and does most things other kids her age do," her father, David, told Upworthy. "Some of the things are done a little different but we usually find a way."

David says that at just 18 months old, Rachel was a confident toddler whose self-affirming favorite phrase was "I do it by self." But, when Easter rolled around that year, David realized there was a problem — how could Rachel participate in an Easter egg hunt if she couldn't see the brightly colored eggs?

Photo by Bianca Spelt/AFP/Getty Images.

He had been asked to help plan the Easter egg hunt for his local church in Alabama, and he wanted Rachel to be able to participate. With her insistence on doing everything "by self," he was determined to find a way for her to do so without parental assistance. David needed a way to let Rachel be her independent egg-hunting self without cramping her style.

Rachel might be visually impaired, but her hearing was totally fine — and that's when David found the perfect solution:

Easter eggs that beep.

It took some quick research online, but thanks to his day job as a bomb technician, David knew a thing or two about electronics and was able to craft an innovative beeping egg for his daughter.

Made with simple components and a 9 volt battery. Photo provided by David Hyche, used with permission.

The idea was well-received by both kids and their parents.

"The kids really enjoy being able to do this activity by themselves. I have seen kids grow in confidence before my eyes and parents change their attitudes about what activities their kids can do with a little modification," David said, noting that letting Rachel try anything and everything she wants can be difficult at times.

"I learned from my Rachel not to decide for her what she likes and doesn’t like or what she can and cannot do. Sometimes this is hard. A skateboard comes to mind."

Photo provided by Captain Shajahan Jagtian, used with permission.

Teachers at schools for the visually impaired also fell in love with the idea and started using the eggs for lessons beyond the Easter hunt.

"Teachers for the blind have also used the eggs year-round to teach location skills. I noticed early on that my daughter had trouble finding items she dropped or lost. The eggs teach the kids to search in three dimensions, not just on the floor," David explained.

In the last couple years, the beeping Easter eggs have spread to communities all over the country.

Bomb squads in Prince George County. Maryland, and Tampa Bay Florida, recently used crafting the eggs as a training exercise in soldering and circuitry as well as an opportunity to give back to the community.

"[The officers] really don't like to be out in the front of things so for us to use our skills to help kids that are not as fortunate as most makes all of us feel good," said Randall Mattson-Laurent of Tampa Bay.

Photo provided by Captain Shajahan Jagtiani, used with permission.

David Hyche has spent the past decade working on other innovative Easter ideas to help even more kids with disabilities.

"This year I built and tried a vibrating egg that I believe will allow kids who are both deaf and blind to participate next year," he told Upworthy. "I believe that the kids will be able to locate the eggs through vibrations if we place them on a wood floor."

David knows that simple modifications like these can truly help kids with disabilities feel included, just like they did for his daughter.

David and his daughter Rachel. Photo provided by David Hyche, used with permission.

"I really enjoy the exposure that the blind and visually impaired kids and adults get through this project," he said. "I had never known a blind person prior to Rachel and I was nervous around them at first. I think that the more that the public understands anything that they are not familiar with, the more it will be accepted."

As for Rachel, she's outgrown the Easter egg hunts, but has inherited her dad's helpful spirit.

"As a self-described, 11-year-old pre-teen, my daughter claims to be too grown up to hunt eggs," he says. "We now move into the phase of her helping other kids during the event. She still gets candy."

From Your Site Articles
Trending Stories