Public and Physicians Perception of Oculoplastic Surgery Subspecialty in Saudi Arabia.

Objective of the study. Each answer option to targeted questions was encoded with either one or zero points, and each participant's response was scored accordingly, with the maximum score being 22 points, reflecting the highest perception rate according to the questionnaire.Results: Data were collected from 1029 questionnaire responses, with 202 of the respondents belonging to physicians. The highest number of responses was from females which consisted 82% of our sample. Perception scores were higher among physicians with a mean of 12.3 ± 2.9 points compared to a mean score of 11.2 ± 2.9 among the public. Age played a statistically significant factor in both physicians and the public as younger participants' scores were higher.Conclusion: Insufficient knowledge of oculoplastic surgery subspecialty was observed among the public and physicians. Moreover, core aspects of oculoplastic field such as lacrimal system pathology and orbit pathology were less recognized by participants of our study, which highlights the importance of raising awareness of oculoplastic surgery and the diversity of the field, to enhance referral patterns among physicians and improve medical advice seeking among the public resulting in better health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]