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Practitioners must be honest, informative about potential ocular prosthesis results
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ATLANTA — While many individuals play a role in setting patient expectations with ocular prosthesis procedures, ophthalmologists and ocularists should provide as much information as possible to patients to help avoid dissatisfactory results, an ocularist said.
"Be realistic — tell patients what you can do and what you can't do, and don't make promises you can't keep," Craig R. Pataky, BCO, BADO, said here at the joint scientific session of the American Society of Ocularists and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
While family, friends and the media play key roles in establishing expectations for patients receiving ocular prostheses, he said physicians and ocularists also play important roles in establishing patients' expectations.
Physicians and ocularists should never inform patients that an ocular prosthesis will be perfect, that it will be identical to the existing eye or that other individuals will not be able to detect that the patient is wearing an ocular prosthesis, Mr. Pataky said.