Job profile

Overview of tasks and activities

Facial injuries caused by accidents, burns, tumors, and congenital facial deformities often place a heavy burden on the psyche and function of those affected. When a lifelike reconstruction cannot be achieved through plastic surgery, the skills and expertise of prosthetists are required.

Missing facial features such as ears, noses, and eyes, as well as cheeks and lips, are faithfully recreated and individually customized in shape and color, so that wearers quickly perceive the epithesis – the removable facial prosthesis – as belonging to them. An epithesis must be indistinguishable from the surrounding skin and must optimally compensate for the defect visible without the epithesis. Epitheses are made of soft medical-grade silicone and attached using a variety of methods. These include fixing an epithesis to glasses, gluing, retention in undercut areas, and, in recent years, the standard anchoring method using extraoral implants with screwed-on magnets. Implant fixation, in particular, achieves very high patient satisfaction.

The epithetists individually adapt acrylate eye shells for orbital epitheses, but also acrylate eye prostheses/bulbus fittings in cases of missing eyeball (enucleation).

But epitheses in the neck area (trachea and esophagus) as well as finger, foot, hand, nipple or genital epitheses also fall within the professional profile of the epithetist.

Before a patient is fitted with a prosthesis, a thorough explanation of all treatment options is essential. Prosthetists and physicians work together in this process. Only after all questions have been answered does the fabrication of the prosthesis begin, starting with an impression of the affected area and the creation of a model. A wax model of the prosthesis is then sculpted, tried on the patient, and adjusted until it fits perfectly. Recently, digital methods (computer-aided implant planning, extraoral scans, 3D-printed models) have been increasingly used in the fabrication of prostheses.