Old woman cured of back pain suddenly regained sight after 11 years of blindness

Strangely, while participating in a study on back pain, the electrical stimulation method used by scientists to treat back pain unexpectedly helped her see clearly.

Have a rare type of glaucoma

Lynley Hood (80 years old) is a resident of Dunedin (New Zealand). Previously, her job was writing and she had won several literary awards in her hometown. One night in 2011, Mrs. Hood was reading a book when her left eye suddenly became blurred, according to the New Zealand Herald .

Chuyện lạ: nghiên cứu chữa đau lưng vô tình làm sáng mắt cụ bà mù 11 năm - Ảnh 1. — Mrs. Lynley Hood regained her sight after receiving electric shock to her head.

She thought she was tired so she went to bed. But the next morning, her vision was still blurry. She went to the doctor and found out she had a rare form of glaucoma that caused her to lose central vision in her left eye and her right eye to become almost completely blurry. The condition left her virtually blind, and unable to read or write.

Doctors said the type of glaucoma she had would never improve. All that could be done was to keep it from getting worse. In 2020, Hood fell and broke her pelvis, leaving her with severe back pain. But what seemed like a terrible accident led to the opportunity to regain her sight.

Back pain treatment suddenly clears eyes

Her back pain gave her the opportunity to participate in a chronic pain treatment study by scientists at the University of Otago (New Zealand) in 2022. Her wish when participating in the study was to improve her persistent back pain. However, the results came in an unexpected direction.

In the study, volunteers were asked to wear a special helmet-shaped cap. Inside the cap were electrodes that provided electrical stimulation to the patient.

The volunteers were divided into two groups. The first group received deep brain stimulation, while the second group was a control group and only received electrical stimulation to the scalp. Ms. Hood was in the second group.

But after four weeks of electrical stimulation to the surface of her scalp, Ms. Hood’s vision suddenly returned completely. Neither the research team nor her ophthalmologist could believe it could happen.

“It was amazing, her vision improved so much that the ophthalmologist said it was a miracle. A miracle of chance,” Dr Divya Adhia, one of the study's leaders, told the Otago Daily Times.

Hood has since started reading and writing again. The team is not sure what helped her regain her sight. They are currently conducting another study alongside the chronic pain study to find out, according to the New Zealand Herald.

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