The parents of a baby who was born without eyes are hopeful their son will one day be able to see. Staff at Arizona's Banner Desert Medical Center initially thought baby Richie's face was swollen at birth.
But they were stunned to discover the reason his eyelids would not open was because he did not have eyes - an extremely rare condition, called Anophthalmia, they had never come across before.
Richie's mother Kelly Lopez, who had a normal pregnancy, became worried after almost two weeks went by and her son had opened his eyes.
An MRI scan 13 days after he was born showed he had been born without eyes.
She told KTLA: 'By the time we left, I think every single nurse had cried with us.'
But she and her husband, from Mesa, Arizona, are optimistic that science will progress enough to help Richie, who does have an optic nerve, in his lifetime.
The three-month-old had surgery to be fitted with expanders in his sockets, so that can grow enough to hold a prosthetic eyeball in the future.
But after rubbing his eyes, they fell out - and only one remains after his mother was able to place it back in.
She described her husband's encouragement as he held their son while she struggled to insert the expander, adding: 'I got it in and then I just cried'.
Mrs Lopez said: 'I do hold out hope. I know that researchers are testing it and doing what they can, but I do hope that, one day, they'll be able to grow an eye or transplant an eye.'
But for now, the couple are helping their son with special toys and development programs.
What is Anophthalmia Anophthalmia is a medical term that means an absence of the eye - and a child may be born with one, or both eyes, missing from the eye socket. The terms Anophthalmia and Microphthalmia (small eyes) are often used interchangeably since CT scans or MRI show some remnants of either the globe or surrounding tissue in most cases.
The condition is extremely rare and a report from a prospective study of 50,000 newborns found an incidence of microphthalmia of 0.22 per 1,000 live births.
In a recent study in England, the prevalence of Anophthalmia and Microphthalmia was one per 10,000 births.
It is not known exactly what makes Anophthalmia occur, but it is likely due to a disruption in the sequence of developmental steps that take place when the eye is forming during pregnancy.
They may result from inherited genetic mutations, sporadic genetic mutations, chromosome abnormalities, prenatal environmental insult or other unknown factors.
Unfortunately, there is no treatment that will restore vision in children affected by Anophthalmia and they need to undergo repeated hospital visits. Many have prosthetic eyes to ensure that the bone and soft tissue around the eye socket grows properly and to improve appearance.
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