Visual Assessment of Facial Differences in Patients Reconstructed With Ocular Prostheses: A Web-Based Survey.

Background: This study intends to determine the visual recognition of facial differences between patients reconstructed with ocular prostheses and its similarities or differences to the contralateral unaffected eye. The authors hypothesize that a prosthetic eye is an indistinguishable replacement for the appearance of an original eye.

Methods: This is a randomized, local, photo-based survey. Five surveys were designed with ten questions each. Each question included a photo of an eligible patient who underwent prosthetic eye reconstruction. The left and right eyes were marked A and B, respectively. Four options were provided to the surveyees/participants in the study: option A-left eye prosthesis, B-right eye prosthesis, C-both A and B, and (D)-no eye prosthesis.

Results: The overall correctness (OA) is 38.4%. This suggested that 38.4% of occasions public raters correctly identified prosthetic eyes. Furthermore, 69.4% have an average correctness per photo (CP) of <50%. The distribution of data points for correctness per rating (CR) shows a mean of 0.382 which further confirms the percentage calculated for overall correctness of photos, thus validating the results obtained from the study. These results suggest that raters could not tell the difference between the prosthetic and the real eyes, regardless of the photo.

Conclusion: The findings revealed a notable consistency among respondents in discerning between the two, indicating a high level of success in mimicking the natural appearance of an eye through prosthetic means, thus proving our hypothesis.