Gail Lane has never seen the face of the man she loves. A decade ago, she lost her vision, leaving her with only memories of what the world looked like. Flowers in bloom. The rolling green of her favorite golf course. The familiar faces of her oldest friends, frozen in time.

“I’ve never seen Phil,” Lane, 74, referring to her partner of eight years, told the Vancouver Sun. “And I have friends who are more newly acquired who I’ve never seen.”

But this may soon change. Lane is the first patient in Canada to undergo an astonishing surgery that sounds more like science fiction than modern medicine. A surgeon will extract one of her teeth, drill a hole into it, insert a tiny plastic lens, and then—three months later—implant the entire structure into her eye.

The procedure, called osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (OOKP), is extremely rare — but it actually works in restoring vision for patients who had severe scarring on their eyes caused by some type of trauma. For people like Lane, whose eyes have suffered irreversible corneal damage, it offers a last glimmer of hope.

A Tooth for an Eye

It may seem bizarre to use a tooth as the foundation for an artificial lens, but for ophthalmologists, it makes perfect sense. The hard dentine of a tooth provides a stable, long-lasting structure, one that won’t be rejected by the body.

“There is no risk of rejection, because we’re using part of the patient’s own body,” Dr. Greg Moloney, the surgeon leading the historic operation at Vancouver’s Mount Saint Joseph Hospital, explained As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal from CBC Radio.

The surgery is performed in two phases. First, a canine tooth—also known as an eye tooth—is removed and carefully reshaped. A small hole is drilled into it, and a plastic optical lens is inserted. The tooth is then sewn into the patient’s cheek, where it remains for three months, allowing a layer of tissue to grow around it.

At the same time, a flap of skin from inside the patient’s mouth is placed over the damaged eye, preparing it for the second phase of the procedure. “We lay it over the whole eyeball to try to let it take root,” Moloney said. “And then it turns into this pink, healthy, happy substance there.”

Three months later, the tooth—now encased in its own living tissue—is removed from the cheek and implanted into the eye. The iris and the damaged parts of the eye are taken out, and the lens-tooth structure is carefully sewn into place. Finally, the oral tissue is pulled back over the eye, with a small opening cut to allow the patient to see.

“It looks like a little pink thing with a window in it,” said Moloney.

If all goes well, patients can begin to regain their vision within a month.

A Rare and Radical Surgery

For those who have never heard of OOKP, the procedure can sound shocking, even grotesque (as a squeamish person myself, I concur).

“What do you mean you use a tooth?” Lane recalled thinking when she first learned about it. “It was kind of weird, just spooky in a way.”

She’s not alone in that reaction. Brent Chapman, a 33-year-old from North Vancouver, is one of two other patients who underwent the same surgery around the same time, in late February. He was initially skeptical—until he spoke to a woman in Australia who had the procedure done.

“She had been completely blind for 20 years and is now snow skiing,” he said. “I know it sounds a little crazy and science fiction-y.”

Chapman lost his sight as a teenager after an autoimmune reaction to ibuprofen triggered Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare but devastating condition that caused severe burns on his body, including his eyes. Over the past 20 years, he has endured 50 surgeries, including 10 corneal implants. None have lasted.

“When I get it back, you know, it would be sort of this great rush,” Chapman said. “Then I’d lose it again and it would be heartbreaking, and I sort of sank into this depression.”

For patients like Chapman and Lane, OOKP is a last resort. The procedure is not without risks, including potential infections that could lead to total vision loss. But for those who have no sight to begin with, the gamble is worth it.

“The risk-reward ratio for these patients, when they have no vision at all, is well worth it, we think,” Moloney said.

A New Future for Blindness Treatment?

Though this is the first time the surgery has been performed in Canada, OOKP has been around for decades. It was first pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, and a recent study of 59 Italian patients who underwent the procedure between 1969 and 2011 found that 94% still had their implants in place. More remarkably, 50% had vision good enough to meet the legal requirements for driving.

The surgery is now performed in only a handful of countries, including the U.K., Germany, Japan, and India. In the U.S., just one documented case took place in 2009.

Moloney, who has performed seven OOKP surgeries in Australia, hopes to change that. After moving to Canada in 2021, he spent years organizing and fundraising to make the procedure available. St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation raised $430,000 to support the program for three years, after which it will be absorbed into the healthcare system.

“The resources that we invest into this small group of people are a lot, but the effect on those people is really dramatic. It’s life-changing,” Moloney said.

For Lane, it’s not just about regaining independence. It’s about seeing the people she loves once more.

“They’re all frozen in time for me,” she said. “And I haven’t seen myself for 10 years.”

If the surgery is successful, she has a long list of things she wants to do—many of them simple joys taken for granted by the sighted.

“If I’m fortunate enough to get some sight back, there will be wonderful things to see,” she said. “It’s like a miracle.”