A Canadian man who could not see had his eyesight restored due to a surprising source—his teeth. Doctors in Vancouver implanted Brent Chapman’s tooth in his eyes in a jaw-dropping procedure.

“It is a rare operation that most people have not heard of, even if you are an eye surgeon,” Dr. Greg Moloney, an ophthalmologist and surgeon at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The procedure, known as osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis, or OOKP, uses a patient’s own tooth to craft a support structure for an artificial cornea.

The surgery done on Chapman was broken down into two parts: first, Moloney and his team removed one of Chapman’s teeth, shaved it down into a rectangle, drilled a hole, and popped a plastic optical lens inside. The tooth remained in the position for around three months.

Dr. Moloney, in the meantime, prepared Chapman’s eye by removing the top layer of the surface and replacing it with a soft tissue graft from inside the patient’s cheek. This graft needs a few months to heal so it can support the implant. Dr. Moloney said the initial procedure went smoothly, and Chapman will be monitored closely over the next few months. When it’s time for the second surgery, Chapman’s tooth will be removed from his cheek and placed into his eyeball.

“(The tooth) doesn’t have any connective tissue that I can actually pass a suture through to connect it to the eyeball,” said Dr. Moloney. “So the point of implanting it for three months is for it to gain the layer of supporting tissue.”

The graft will be pulled back, and thereafter the damaged iris will be removed, and the tooth along with a new optical lens will be placed into the eye. However, Dr. Moloney said a small hole for the lens to peek through will be there.

According to Dr. Moloney, teeth have dentin, which consists of a plastic tissue that helps create a cornea lining. “(Teeth) contain dentin, which is the ideal tissue to house a plastic lens without the body rejecting it,” he said. Plus, the tissue from the cheek recognizes the tooth, making the whole process smoother.

However, according to experts, despite the success, the product is full of risks too. “With any ocular surgery of any kind, there’s a chance that we could introduce infection and lose all our vision,” Moloney told CBC. The surgery is also not meant for everyone and is said to be the last-ditch option for those with corneal blindness in the front of the eyes caused by conjunctival scarring from autoimmune diseases, chemical burns, and other traumas - but only those who still have healthy retina and optic nerves.

Despite the risks, the procedure has been restoring sight for several decades in at least ten countries with a high success rate. According to studies, even 27 years post-surgery, at least 94 per cent of patients still had vision.

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