'It's like a miracle': Blind woman can see again after first-in-Canada surgery

Calgary Herald

4 days ago

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She was blind for a decade, but Gail Lane's sight is slowly returning after she made history as the first Canadian to have her own tooth, with a lens drilled into it, inserted into her eye.
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'It's like a miracle,' Lane said of the strange sounding operation that is new to Canada but was pioneered in Italy more than five decades ago.
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Lane's vision has returned gradually after the two-step procedure was completed during surgeries in February and May.
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Early on, she could see light, and then colours. Objects such as cars and furniture came into focus about a month ago. The first substantial thing the Victoria resident could identify was the wagging tail of her partner Phil's black lab, Piper.
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'I could see Piper's tail moving. I couldn't see his whole body, but I could see his tail,' she recalled Thursday. 'I can now start to actually see his features. He's got some little white whiskers growing under his chin. And now I can see his eyes.'
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It's a dream come true for Lane, who had full sight until age 64, when she had a rare reaction to prescription drugs that led to scarring on her eyes and the loss of her vision.
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Restoring that sight, a decade later, has been a long, sometimes scary journey, but one for which she is grateful.
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'Two operations later, my recovery is going well and I've got some sight returning. Life is different now,' she said. 'I can now go outside and see the beautiful blue sky and the leaves on the trees.'
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The doctor who brought osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, nicknamed tooth-in-eye surgery, to Canada is Providence Health ophthalmologist Dr. Greg Moloney, who performed this procedure on seven patients in his home country of Australia before relocating to Vancouver in 2021.
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Lane was the first of three Canadian patients he operated on at East Vancouver's Mount Saint Joseph Hospital earlier this year. All are now in different stages of recovery with sight returning in varied ways and at at different speeds, he said.
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'We're seeing all three patients get their vision back,' he said. 'It's usual to have some ups and downs in the early course after the surgery is done. And that's happening, but nothing really that's major.'
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In February, Moloney and members of his large operating team extracted canine teeth, coincidentally also known as eye teeth, from the three patients. The teeth were shaped, holes were drilled in the middle and plastic lenses were glued inside.