Boy blinded in horrific attack recovering well after implants

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Six-year-old Bin Bin, the boy whose eyes were gouged out in a horrific attack late last month, is shown today at a hospital in Shenzhen in the company of his parents. He received ocular implants yesterday as the first step toward fitting him with realistic moving artificial eyes. Doctors completed a thorough exam on the patient and found no infection or complications. Doctors said he’s recovering well physically.

The six-year-old boy whose eyes were gouged out in a horrific attack late last month and got implants yesterday and is recovering well today, doctors said.

The implants are a precursor to fitting the boy, Bin Bin, with prosthetic eyes that will look and move more like normal eyes, but do not restore vision.

The five-hour operation, conducted by a team led by Hong Kong-based eye expert Dennis Lam at his hospital in the southern city of Shenzhen, was completed yesterday evening.

Lam offered free surgery after hearing the brutal story of the boy from north China’s Shanxi Province.

Inggie Ho, an assistant to Dr Lam, said that the surgery had gone well and the little boy should be fitted with prosthetic eyes in four to six weeks.

Lam was optimistic about the boy’s recovery and said he will be able to produce tears normally when he recovers.

The hospital will train the boy by year’s end to use a sensory navigation tool, with which he will be able to walk independently.

Lam says future technology might help Guo regain up to 40 percent of his lost vision.

The next stage of treatment would be fitting tiny cameras in Guo’s eyeballs which would relay a signal, based on the shape of objects in front of him, to an electric pulse generator connected to his tongue. With training, he would be able to sense shapes, Lam said.

Zhang Huiying, 41, the boy’s aunt, has been identified by police as the suspect in the attack based on investigations and DNA test results last week.

She took her own life when she jumped down a well on August 30, six days after Bin Bin’s attack, local police said.

• Eye-gouged boy discharged from hospital
• Police disclose details of blinded boy case
• Late aunt suspected in eye-gouged boy case
• Suicide 'not related' to eye-gouge attack
• Eye-gouged boy's aunt's suicide irrelevant to case: relatives

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