A woman from Penghu has become the first person in the world to have a tooth removed through her eye socket. A 23-year-old woman surnamed Hsu started to struggle with chewing six months ago. Doctors were astonished to find she had a tooth growing upward from her jaw towards her eye. To save their patient from eye damage, they removed a large number of teeth, but the upward-pointing tooth could only come out through the eye. The pioneering surgery was a major success.
She walks onstage with a card in her hand. This woman surnamed Hsu flew in from Penghu to thank her doctor for an unprecedented surgery that gave her back her capacity to speak, after a tooth began growing toward her eye.
Ms. Hsu
Surgical patient
Apart from the appearance, it was also affecting my eating, and it was affecting my ability to bite down. And when I spoke, saliva came out of my mouth, because it had pushed on my four front incisors and distorted them. That was so inconvenient in day-to-day life.
Hsu was unlucky enough to have a tooth grow in the wrong direction out of her jaw – upward. It was caused by a very rare bone disorder. Her teeth began to grow irregularly, but it was impossible to wear a brace. The tooth was growing beneath her left eyeball, and if it hadn’t been removed, could have grown unchecked into her eye, damaging her sight. After much consideration, doctors decided to remove the tooth through a surgical incision into her eye socket. The eight-hour surgery removed 16 teeth from upper and lower jaws.
Dr. Lee Hsiao-ping
Tri-Service General Hospital
The high-up tooth was already approaching her eye socket. Before long, it would have broken through into her eye and could have damaged her eyeball, affecting her eyesight. Luckily, this time we could remove the tooth through the eye socket.
This was the first tooth removal ever carried out through an eye socket. After her traumatic ordeal, Hsu is now on the mend, and can smile easily again.
