Blind dad-of-two can see his sons' faces for first time after surgeon restores his sight using patient's TEETH

A blind dad-of-two has seen his sons' faces for the first time after surgeons restored his sight - using one of his patient's teeth.

Ian Tibbetts has been almost completely blind for 14 years, when a piece of scrap metal from an oven struck him in the face and ripped his cornea in six places.

His wound healed, but he lost sight in his right eye in 1998 - before going blind in his left eye a year later.

But his sight has remarkably restored thanks to pioneering procedure which reconstructed part of his right eye using one of Mr Tibbetts' own teeth.

A tiny plastic lens is inserted into a hole drilled through the tooth, which is later implanted in the eye - allowing Mr Tibbetts to see the faces of his four-year-old twins Callum and Ryan for the first time.

Before the breakthrough operation, the 43-year-old former forklift truck driver had only ever seen his two sons as blurry shapes.

But after the operation - which he underwent in December last year - the delighted dad-of-two can now see his children for the first time.

He said: 'I have my independence back now and I can start looking after the kids while my wife is out at work. 'Before, the kids were just shapes. I couldn’t make them out.

'I had to actually learn to tell them apart by their voices. I could tell whichever one it was by the way they spoke and sometimes by how quickly they moved.

'The image in my mind was totally different to how they were – the features. I gave them a big hug and a kiss.'

Mr Tibbetts first damaged his eye in 1997, and although he returned to work a year later, he suffered more problems and eventually lost the sight in his right eye in 1998.

The procedure he underwent last December - called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) - involves the reconstructing the eye using a tiny plastic lens and one of the patient’s own teeth.

And as long as the retina is still functioning, the lens implanted into the eye provides a new window through which the patient is able to see.

Remarkably, because the tooth belongs to the patient, the body does not reject it.

Mr Tibbetts, who lives in Telford, Shrops., with his wife Alex, 35, and their twin boys, agreed to have the revolutionary surgery after all other treatments failed.

He added: 'The sight doesn’t last forever so at the moment I am just taking each day as it comes and appreciating it.

'I would do anything to get some sight back. I had to try something. I said anything is better than what it was.'

The treatment is only suitable for certain types of blindness and can only be performed by one surgeon in Britain - Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton.

Professor Liu said: 'OOKP is not guaranteed to restore sight but it does have a high success rate.

'Patients who have the surgery are often able to see immediately and the quality of sight can be extraordinarily good.

'However it is only suitable for certain types of blindness, specifically patients who have severe and irreversible corneal damage.

'To be able to restore the sight of someone who has been blind for many years is an immense privilege.'

Ian's story of regaining his sight and seeing his twin boys' faces for the first time will be shown in a BBC One documentary 'The Day I Got My Sight Back' .

The programme - which will be shown at 10.35pm next Tuesday (October 8) - was recorded over a seven-month period last year and follows three of Professor Liu's patients.