{"id":78193,"date":"2025-08-18T07:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T07:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/78193\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T07:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T07:45:08","slug":"what-is-tooth-in-eye-surgery-north-shore-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/78193\/","title":{"rendered":"What is tooth-in-eye surgery? – North Shore News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brent Chapman is one of the first patients in Canada to receive the miraculously macabre procedure<\/p>\n

A missing tooth isn\u2019t stopping Brent Chapman from smiling.<\/p>\n

The North Vancouver man’s\u00a0canine has been surgically implanted in his right eye, giving him a lasting lease on vision for the first time in 20 years.<\/p>\n

After a full day in the operating room on June 6, Chapman became one of the first three candidates in Canada to receive a procedure called osteo-odonto-keratoprothesis, better known as tooth-in-eye surgery.<\/p>\n

It involves extracting a patient\u2019s tooth, putting a plastic lens in it, then fixing that to the patient\u2019s eye socket. The tooth is held in place with flesh from the patient\u2019s cheek.<\/p>\n

This bit of macabre medicine might sound extreme \u2013 and it is.<\/p>\n

When his dad first brought it up to Chapman as a young teenager, he wouldn\u2019t even consider it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very young, and I just wanted to be normal and fit in. And he showed me this, and I was like, \u2018Dad, we\u2019re not doing that. What are you talking about? Putting a tooth in my eye. This is science fiction,\u2019\u201d said Chapman, who is now 33 years old.<\/p>\n

Even his surgeons warned him off it at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would be like, \u2018Don\u2019t do it. It\u2019s extremely hard surgery. It\u2019s long. You can\u2019t get it in Canada. You\u2019re very young,\u2019\u201d Chapman said. \u201cThey wanted to explore all the options.\u201d<\/p>\n

But dozens of procedures later \u2013 all of which led to only short-term success \u2013 tooth-in-eye became his best and maybe only option see again.<\/p>\n

Lost sight due to allergic reaction to ibuprofen<\/p>\n

Chapman\u2019s decades-long journey to restore his sight began when he lost it.<\/p>\n

He was playing at a Christmas basketball tournament when he was 13. Through the physical activity, Chapman was feeling sore. So he took some ibuprofen.<\/p>\n

What he didn\u2019t know was that he had a rare condition called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. Instead of relieving his discomfort, the over-the-counter drug caused a catastrophic allergic reaction in over 90 per cent of his body.\u00a0The burn-like wounds affect mucosal membranes in particular, which included\u00a0Chapman\u2019s nostrils, lungs and eyes.<\/p>\n

With Chapman\u2019s life on the line, he was placed under medically induced coma for 27 days. He describes that experience as living in a psychedelic dreamworld, which was at times \u201cbeautiful\u201d and others \u201cterrible and a nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he awoke, Chapman began a gruelling rehab process. He had to relearn how to eat and walk. Slowly, most aspects of his physical health recovered \u2013 except for his eyesight.<\/p>\n

Due to a bad infection, he lost his left eye completely. And the cornea (outer layer) of his right eye was damaged so badly that he couldn\u2019t see out of it anymore. Also destroyed was Chapman\u2019s ability to produce tears, which are necessary for an eye\u2019s health and function.<\/p>\n

That started a long and emotionally draining search for a solution. Supported by his parents and the provincial health care system, Chapman travelled around the world \u2013 to countries like the U.S., Italy and Singapore \u2013 trying different medical procedures to restore his cornea.<\/p>\n

On a few occasions, stem cells were taken from his parents\u2019 eyes in hopes the material could help fix the trauma in Chapman\u2019s eye. Some of the operations worked, allowing him to see the world again for a time, but none lasted more than a year.<\/p>\n

And each procedure increased the risk that his eye could be compromised beyond repair.<\/p>\n

Conversation with successful patient changed mind about ‘science fiction’ surgery<\/p>\n

Around two years ago, what Chapman once considered science fiction started to become science reality.<\/p>\n

An Australian doctor that he happened to meet around the beginning of his battle with blindness had returned to Canada \u2013 Vancouver, in fact \u2013 to open a practice that would focus on tooth-in-eye.<\/p>\n

Chapman still had some doubts, but the last of them were settled by a phone call with a former success story in Australia \u2013 a woman named Heather, who\u2019s in her 60s and skiing down mountains again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was kind of pressing her to tell me, like, this can\u2019t be as good as you\u2019re saying it is,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd she didn\u2019t really have anything bad to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapman remembers coming off the phone feeling excited and optimistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that moment it became very real, and also just emotionally I couldn\u2019t deal with this roller coaster ride of having a little bit of good vision for just a month or two, and then going blind again,\u201d he said. \u201cIt felt like groundhog day \u2026 for 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Greg Moloney, an ophthalmologist with Providence Health Care, said the problem with Chapman\u2019s condition and other candidates like him is the front of the eye has sustained enormous damage, but the back of the eye is healthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agonizing thing for Brent is that he knows that he can see, and he has moments of being able to see for\u00a0a few days at a time after we do all these other surgeries, where we restore a clear window in front of the eye,\u201d Moloney said, comparing a damaged cornea to a cracked windshield of a car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis surgery is just a very fancy way of replacing the windshield on the front and letting all the light back in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Origins of tooth-and-eye surgery remain a mystery<\/p>\n

But the tooth-in-eye surgery is a long\u00a0and very resource-intensive process. Chapman\u2019s first operation happened at the end of February, and Moloney was aided by three other doctors \u2013 one who flew from Australia at his own expense to help train the other physicians.<\/p>\n

After extracting Champan\u2019s tooth\u00a0and drilling a hole in it, they put a plastic \u201coptic\u201d through (a cylinder that focuses light). They then stuck the seeing tooth in his cheek, where it sat for three months to be surrounded by body tissue.<\/p>\n

The second step, in June, was even more intense. Over the course of a day, the surgical team worked to remove the flesh-encased tooth and attach it to Chapman\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering if such a surgery was conceived by a deranged mind, or with the help of LSD, Moloney has asked himself the same questions. But the answers will never come, as the Italian doctor who invented tooth-in-eye in the early 1960s, Benedetto Strampelli, is dead.<\/p>\n

However, while the fleshy iteration is new, the practice of implanting artificial corneas has been around since1789, Moloney said. There are actually hundreds of versions of that procedure.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the problem with all of them is getting that plastic [lens] to be accepted by the eye and by the body,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the idea of the tooth starts to make sense, as a biological bridge that holds the optic plastic in place and won’t be rejected by the body as a foreign interloper.<\/p>\n

As part of his\u00a0training, a still-skeptical Moloney went to parts of the world like Germany and Italy, where tooth-in-eye surgeries had been done for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had dinner with people who\u2019d had the operation in the ’70s and ’80s. And 30, almost 40 years later, were living normal lives,\u201d he said. \u201cThose meetings really convinced [me].\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapman now an advocate for the procedure<\/p>\n

For Chapman, the results of his surgery have been life-changing.<\/p>\n

On a scale from one to 10, comparing his vision from before the incident after the basketball game to times he couldn\u2019t see at all, Chapman rates his sight now at a strong eight, or even higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very, very grateful,\u201d he said. \u201cWe did an adjustment last Tuesday, and since, that it\u2019s just been a world of difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

As\u00a0his rollercoaster ride with vision hopefully fades in\u00a0the rear view, Chapman is looking forward to expanding his horizons in life to novel activities \u2013 like travelling for non-medical reasons, to countries like Japan and the U.K.<\/p>\n

Chapman said he will also use his renewed sense of optimism to advocate for tooth-in-eye surgery. Part of that is drawing attention, and potential donor dollars, to the St. Paul\u2019s Foundation \u2013 which made his surgery possible<\/a>. Another part of his advocacy is connecting with other prospective patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s someone out there that\u2019s going through what I was going through, and maybe they come across this, and it sets off a chain reaction, and it ends up being positive for them as well \u2026 I\u2019d feel good about that,\u201d Chapman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m open to speaking to [any] potential candidates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>

\ntwitter.com\/nick_laba<\/a>

\n@nicklaba.bsky.social\u202c<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\":calling:\"\u00a0Want to stay updated on North Vancouver and West Vancouver news? Sign up for our free\u00a0daily newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n