Living with a Prosthetic Eye

Abstract

This chapter contains information for patients and caregivers on a wide range of issues that prosthetic eye wearers encounter in their daily lives. It provides guides for handling social interactions, coping with the impact of monocular vision and living with prosthetic eyes generally. The writing style of this chapter is different from the rest of this book so that practitioners may reproduce the sections more readily for their patients’ use. The chapter is mainly directed towards people who wear a single prosthetic eye, but many of the issues also apply to people who have lost both eyes and wear two prostheses. The chapter begins with a section on handling social interactions and reflects advice given to people with disfigurements provided by the “Changing Faces” organisation. It then discusses the effects of reduced peripheral vision and altered depth perception, inserting and removing a prosthetic eye, personal socket hygiene and prosthetic eye care and, finally, tips for selecting glasses.