Acid assault model Katie Piper finds sight back

A model who was missing blind in one eye after acid was thrown in her face has told of her happiness after having her sight brought back by stem cell treatment.

Katie Piper undergone third degree blazes when an ex-boyfriend arranged for acid to be thrown in her face.

She lost sight in one eye, but following cure by doctors at the Queen Victoria Hospital, in East Grinstead, it has been restored.

She said earlier to her operation her sight was like "being underwater".

Ms Piper, 28, has had just about100 operations to heal injure done to her face in the assault in 2008.

But doctors held out slight hope of her sight being returned after the acid flamed into her cornea and left a scar across it.

But, experts took tissue from an unidentified donor, raised it and then stitched it into her hurt eye.

She said: ''I can see shadows, I can evaluate depth, I can see movement, I can see figures - if someone holds their hand up I can see how many fingers they are holding up.

''I would say the most noteworthy thing about returning my sight is I can be freer if I have operations on my good eye.''

A Channel 4 documentary group followed Ms Piper as she underwent the surgery.

She said: ''Of all my wounds, it's the injured to my left eye that has the main impact.

"The challenging section is not being able to see anything on one side. In crowded places it goes away me sentiments shocked and hopeless."

Eye specialist Sheraz Daya, who healed Ms Piper, said: "We had these cells made by the eye bank in East Grinstead and we removed them on to Katie's eye.

"The charming point about all this is while we're taking tissue from somebody who deceased, in the long term what we have originated is that there's no DNA from that person.

"So we think, in Katie's case, all the cells that we've resettled to be dispersed and for them to be restored by Katie's tissue."

Ms. Piper has set up her own charity intended at making it easier to live with burns and scars.