A 34-year-old man regains his vision thanks to a tooth implant in his eye.

Brent Chapman was just 13 years old when his life changed forever. During Christmas, while playing a basketball game, he began to feel ill. At that moment, he decided to take ibuprofen , a medication he had used before without problems. However, this time his body reacted catastrophically: he suffered Stevens-Johnson syndrome , a severe reaction that caused burns over much of his skin and the surface of his eyes.

Chapman spent 27 days in a coma. During that time, an infection claimed his left eye, and his vision in his right eye was reduced to darkness. Over the next few years, he underwent 50 surgeries, most of them corneal transplants that lasted only a few months before becoming cloudy again. "They'd put in a new cornea, and I'd see a little better for a few months, but it never fully healed, and I'd go back to being blind," the Canadian told CNN.

Her life became a constant stream of operating rooms and treatments. Her skin, as did her body, fully recovered from the burns, but her sight never returned. At least not until now. This year, Chapman underwent an unusual procedure at Vancouver General Hospital: osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis , commonly known as the tooth-in-the-eye procedure.

The process began in February, when surgeons removed a tusk and carved it into a plate. They inserted a small plastic optical cylinder into it, and the piece was implanted under the skin of his cheek so it could develop a blood supply and integrate with his body. In June, the implant was transferred to his right eye in a second operation, replacing the cloudy cornea .

On August 5, he underwent his final surgery to adjust his lenses and correct a slight visual distortion. Days later, on August 13, he was fitted with glasses and found his visual acuity was 20/30, almost the same as that of a person with normal vision problems. "It's indescribable, being able to see the whole city and rediscover the world," Chapman said. " When you're blind or have low vision, you're more in your own head; there's a lot of mental noise. Now it's as if the world has opened up again. I haven't made eye contact with anyone in 20 years."

Now she dreams of traveling, with Japan at the top of her list, and returning to work as a massage therapist. "I've had a lot of time off in recent years due to my surgeries. Now I can help others and stop focusing on my own situation. Psychologically, I'm at my best."

Although it may seem like science fiction, osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis has been performed in several countries for decades, specifically since the 1960s, although only in highly selected patients. In Spain, the technique is extremely rare. "Very few patients each year meet the criteria to undergo this surgery," explains Dr. María Fideliz de la Paz Dalisay, a cornea and ocular surface specialist at Oftalvist Barcelona and a surgeon in Spain who performs this procedure. "It is a last-resort and highly complex surgery, reserved for those who have exhausted all other options and cannot benefit from a corneal transplant."

The procedure is intended for people with corneal blindness and severely damaged ocular surface: victims of chemical or thermal burns, patients with Stevens-Johnson syndrome—like Chapman's—or autoimmune scarring diseases. In these cases, conventional corneal transplants repeatedly fail because the eye lacks limbal stem cells and the ocular surface is too damaged.

Regarding the use of a tooth, De la Paz explains that it is used because "it is a hard, biocompatible, and natural material that holds the optical cylinder rigidly and withstands hostile environments. This combination is key to long-term stability," he points out. The result, when all goes well, can restore functional vision for years, although it requires lifelong checkups to monitor for possible complications such as glaucoma, infections, or membranes that can cloud vision.

For the surgeons who perform it, the moment a patient opens their eyes and sees for the first time in years is indescribable. "Restoring functional vision to people who have exhausted all other options transforms their lives and that of those around them," the specialist summarizes.