Original Alternative Technique of Iris Fabrication for Ocular Prostheses

The loss or absence of an eye creates not only a functional disability, but also an important psychological impact on an individual's social and professional life. Ocular prostheses are maxillofacial prosthetic devices which are generally custom made to replace a lost eye. Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is the most common material used for manufacturing ocular prostheses. The main component of the ocular prostheses is the artificial iris that needs to be identical to the healthy one. For this reason manufacturing the iris is a challenging task for the maxillofacial anaplastologist. The main procedure used in manufacturing the iris is the manual painting technique which can be time consuming and susceptible to error, mainly regarding the color matching. The subject of this article describes an alternative technique of manufacturing the iris. This technique involves using a digital photographing image of the healthy eye which is edited and printed on photographic paper and it seems to offer good esthetic results being less complicated compared to the conventional manual painting technique. The main deficiency of the method is the color distortion which appears after the iris is embedded in the ocular prosthesis. This is caused by an alteration of the photographic paper during the final polymerization stage of the ocular prosthesis which takes place at high temperature.