When the bandages were removed from Thornton’s eye on Labor Day weekend, she was able to recognize faces within hours.Now, two weeks later, she is reading newsprint with a visual acuity of 20/70.

This tooth-in-eye surgery isn’t brand new—it was first developed in Italy decades ago. But Canada just started doing it in 2025, and it’s already giving hope to people with severe vision loss.

A story that seems hard to believe claims Canada has just performed its first surgery in which a tooth is put in a patient's eye to restore sight. This one's true.

Doctors in Florida are the first in the United States to restore a woman's vision by implanting a section of her tooth into her eye, in a surgery called modified osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (MOOKP).

The tooth is then extracted and placed on the eye (allowing the telescope to pass light onto the retina) and the skin graft covers the eye again to keep everything lubricated. The graft can be further ...