Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess patients' satisfaction and Quality of Life with
facial prostheses through a special designed questionnaire.
Material and Methods: 120 patients using facial prostheses retained either by chemical
adhesives or bone anchorage implant for at least 6 months were asked to answer a twenty questions
questionnaire through a cross-sectional survey. This questionnaire covered the appearance,
retention means and effectiveness, awareness, self-confidence, difficulty of placement and removal,
cleaning, restriction of social actions, pain and inflammation of tissues, and advice of the method
to other patients. Visual analogue scale (VA S) was used to show patient response. The mean of the
answers was converted into a percentage to symbolize the satisfaction index.
Results: Wearing facial prostheses made most of patients happy (mean (SD) 9.4 (1.54)). The
most satisfied patients was those who had facial prosthesis retained by implants (p = 0.025), and
additional self-awareness was experienced in those retained by adhesives (p = 0.012). 72% of
patients experienced no pain or troubles with the prosthesis during function. Both implant and
adhesive retained prostheses have noticeable advantages without the presence of statistically
considerable differences between them.
Conclusions: The results showed that use of extraoral prostheses retained by adhesive or by
bone anchorage implant provided a high level of satisfaction among patients.