Man blinded in Fourth of July fireworks accident grows new eye in revolutionary procedure
Five years after a Fourth of July fireworks accident blinded him, a young man has regained his eyesight thanks to a revolutionary transplant that could help millions.
Nick Kharufeh, 28, was celebrating Independence Day near his aunt's home in California when a stray firework exploded at ground level, sending shrapnel into his left eye.
The injury left him permanently blind in that eye, until a new stem cell treatment gave him his vision back.
'It was dark out, and my dad couldn't fully tell what had happened,' said Kharufeh.
The transplant, which took stem cells from his healthy right eye, helped restore partial vision to Kharufeh's injured eye, though it is not perfect.
He can now recognize objects and navigate his surroundings if he covers his right eye, indicating functional vision has returned.
The accident happened in an instant. Kharufeh was standing outside and one firework veered off course, drifted toward the ground, and detonated near his face.
Bits of the explosive struck directly into his left eye, tearing through the cornea, the transparent front part of the eye that helps focus vision.
The impact was so severe that doctors initially feared they lost the eye and would need to be removed.
At the hospital, doctors carefully removed firework debris embedded in the eye.
While the cornea had been shredded, a specialist found that the rest of the eyeball, including deeper structures, remained intact.
It spared him from complete loss of the eye, but the damage left him totally blind on that side.
What followed were months of grueling recovery, medications, nighttime eye drops, multiple surgeries, and a failed attempt to reconstruct his eyelid.
'I didn't leave the house,' he said. 'I didn't tell anybody what happened because I was kind of embarrassed about it.'
Damage to the cornea, especially when stem cells are lost, can leave the surface unable to heal, a condition known as limbal stem cell deficiency.
Limbal stem cells are specialized cells located at the edge of the cornea.
They are responsible for regenerating and maintaining the corneal surface, and without them, the eye cannot repair itself.
'Your eyes are the window to your soul,' he told Live Science. 'I felt like my identity was just gone.'
Corneal blindness affects millions of people worldwide and is often caused by injuries and chemical burns that destroy the eye's ability to heal.
Traditional transplants are not an option for many of these patients because they require a healthy eye surface, something that limbal stem cell deficiency prevents.
Cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation (CALEC), a stem cell based procedure using person's own eye tissue, offers a new path forward.
That's when his mother spotted a clinical trial recruiting patients for a breakthrough treatment called CALEC, at Mass Eye and Ear hospital in Boston.
The procedure involves taking a small sample of stem cells from the healthy eye, growing them into sheets in a lab, and implanting them in the damaged one to restore its surface.
Kharufeh moved to Boston in January 2021 to become one of the first 15 patients to receive the treatment.
Research published in Nature Communications in March, showed the therapy restored the cornea's surface in 93 percent of cases.
Eighteen months after receiving the CALEC transplant, 77 percent of patients showed good healing of the cornea's surface.
This means that for most patients, the treatment helped restore the eye's surface and kept it healthy well over a year after the procedure.
'I was hesitant because they had to do surgery on my good eye,' Kharufeh said.
After the first transplant in early 2021, he walked into his Airbnb and saw something he hadn't in months: a bright blue comforter.
'That moment was everything to me. I literally cried for so long,' the transplant patient explained.
The CALEC therapy was originally tested in a small trial of just four patients with chemical burns.
Those early results, shared in 2018, showed the treatment was safe and could work.
Researchers at Mass Eye and Ear then launched a larger trial in partnership with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children's Hospital and the National Eye Institute, using a manufacturing process that met US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards.
'I think it's given me a whole new life,' Kharufeh said. 'Now it's the point where I can actually feel normal.'
According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), fireworks caused at least eight reported deaths and 9,700 injuries in US in 2023. More than 65 percent of those injuries were on the Fourth of July.
'Every year, we see patients with serious eye injuries caused by fireworks,' said Dr Ula Jurkunas, the lead scientist behind CALEC. 'Most of them are preventable.'
Experts recommend keeping a safe distance from the fireworks, wearing protective glasses when near displays, and never letting children handle fireworks or firecrackers.
Sparklers alone, often handed to children, burn at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt metal and caused 700 emergency room visits in 2017 alone.
Experts say the safest option is to watch professional public displays from at least 500 feet away.
Avoid picking up unexploded fireworks and never allow children to handle sparklers, firecrackers, or bottle rockets.
If you use consumer fireworks where legal, follow strict precautions, never light near people or flammable objects, keep a bucket of water nearby, and never try to relight duds. Misfires can turn deadly.
The Centers for Disease Control notes that 18 percent of tested consumer fireworks had serious safety violations, including faulty fuses and banned chemicals.
Homemade fireworks are also a major hazard and should never be attempted.
If your eye is injured by fireworks, it's a medical emergency. Do not rub, rinse, or apply pressure to the eye, and do not remove any objects stuck in it.
Seek immediate medical help. Avoid taking blood thinners unless advised by a doctor. Even so-called 'safe and sane' fireworks can explode unpredictably.
'It only takes one wrong angle or one second too soon,' Dr Jurkunas said. 'That's all it took for Nick.'
The doctor added that the new procedure will give hope to patients with few or no treatment options for this form of blindness.
'We are hopeful with further study, CALEC can one day fill this crucially needed treatment gap,' she said.
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