A tumour has been removed through a woman's eye in a landmark keyhole surgery.
Ruvimbo Kaviya, 40, had a tumour around her brain removed from the space located beneath the brain and behind the eyes.
Many of these types of tumour would previously have been considered inoperable because of where they are situated, which is in an area called the cavernous sinus.
Removal of this type of tumour requires complex surgery that involves taking off a large part of the skull and moving the brain to access the tumour. This can lead to serious complications, including seizures.
However, surgeons from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have managed to remove one of these tumours using keyhole surgery through Ms Kaviya's eye socket - the first surgery of its kind in Britain.
Experts practised the surgery multiple times. They used 3D models of Ms Kaviya's head, which were created by Lisa Ferrie, a biomedical engineer, and then practised in a cadaver lab.
The surgery, known as an endoscopic trans-orbital approach, took three hours and Ms Kaviya, a nurse in Leeds, was up and walking later the same day.
She has been left with a "tiny scar" near her left eye.
Asim Sheikh, a neurosurgeon, said traditional methods to get to the tumour would require "pressing on quite a lot of brain".
He said: "So if you press on it too much, or retract it, or try and move it apart, then it can lead to patients having seizures afterwards.
He added: "It's a hard to reach area, and this [the keyhole surgery] allows a direct access without any compromise of pressure on the brain. So it just reaches us in areas which were once thought to be inoperable, but now are accessible."
His colleague Jiten Parmar, a maxillofacial surgeon, devised a technique where a little part of the outside wall of the eye socket was cut to allow more access for the endoscope.
Mr Parmar said that before this new keyhole technique, the area that needed to be operated on was "difficult to get to from the outside without taking off most of the skull plate".
He said: "Going through the eye socket gets into the same area and it's a way more elegant approach."
Ms Kaviya said that she did not even think about being the first British patient to undergo such a procedure because the tumour was causing such severe headaches.
She said: "I had some headaches which felt like an electric shock."
She added: "I couldn't even touch my skin on the face, I couldn't eat, I couldn't brush my teeth, it was really terrible."
She was diagnosed with a meningioma in 2023, which medics said they would monitor. During the monitoring, a second meningioma was found in October that year.
Medics at Leeds consulted experts in Spain who said that Ms Kaviya would be a good candidate for the new surgery and so the operation was performed in February 2024.
The mother of three needed three months off work after the surgery but is now back caring for patients that require stroke rehabilitation.
Ms Kaviya said her family had been "sceptical" about the procedure, but added: "But I just told them that 'I just have to do this - it's either I do it or it, it keeps growing, and maybe I will die. Who knows?
"There's a first time for everything. So you never know, this might be the best chance for me to have it.' And it was."