Rehabilitation of enucleated eye by ocular prosthesis: role of parents in prosthesis development.

Abstract

The disfigurement resulting from loss of an eye can cause significant psychological as well as social consequences for both the patient and family. Ambroise Pare, a French surgeon-dentist, is consid-ered the pioneer of modern artificial eyes. In 1944 Murphy and Nirronen fabricated physiologic ocular prosthesis in dental corps of US Navy [1]. An ocular prosthesis does not provide vision; but give psycho-logical support and cosmesis. The scleral shell pros-thesis is a thin hard acrylic shell-like artificial eye. This type of eye prosthesis is worn over a damaged, disfigured eye or eviscerated globe. It provides psy-chological support to patient and his family. A 3-year-old female child was referred to department of Prosthodontics with the history of enucleated left eye two month back due to retinoblastoma of eye (Fig. 1). Keeping in mind the aesthetics and age of the patient, it was planned to make an ocular pros-thesis. First, petroleum jelly was applied to the eye-brows for the easy removal of the impression after setting. For impression a customized perforated tray was used (Fig. 2). A thin mix of ophthalmic alginate (Ophthalmic moldite, Milton Roy Co. Sarasota Fla.) was used. The patient was asked to move her nor-mal eye in all directions to allow the alginate to flow into all areas of the enucleated socket. The tech-nique was modified here onwards by trimming out the iris portion of the stock eye and orienting it on the cast according to previously transferred pupillary mark. Tooth-colored acrylic (SC 10, Pyrax, Roorkee, India) was matched with the color of sclera of the opposite eye. Then the adjusted and modified stock eye-wax pattern combination was processed. Red silk fibres to mimic veins were placed in the dough of the determined acrylic shade followed by routine cur-ing, finishing and polishing. Finally, a thin film of the