You may have never heard of the medical procedure called osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP), possibly because doctors call it tooth-in-eye surgery. Or maybe because your doctor has never proposed transplanting one of your teeth into your eye. This surgery has been done for decades in Australia and has a good track record for restoring sight for certain patients who suffer from corneal blindness and have a functioning retina.
Surgeons remove a patient's canine (eye tooth) and cut it into a rectangle and drill a hole in it to house a telescopic lens. Then they attach it to the patient's inner cheek for a few months to grow tissue around it. Then they implant the tooth in the patient's eyeball! The bio-device works because tooth enamel is so hard, and because transplants from the patient's own body aren't rejected. Three Canadians have recently become the first in that country to try OOKP. Read how this bizarre but established transplant technique works at CBC. -via Boing Boing
(Unrelated image credit: Reese Brown)
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