The bone fractures around the eye sockets are known as orbital fractures. The fractures around this area may not be singular. On some patients, fractures on skull and facial area may occur on different levels. With orbital fractures, there can also be various issues on the eye. There might be various types of cuts on the face, lids, cheeks and skull as well.
What are the causes?
- In-car traffic accidents
- Extravehicular traffic accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Falling from a high surface
- Physical violence are some of the causes.
How is it diagnosed?
First of all, an eye exam should be done on the patients are generally recovered. In this stage, inner eye injuries should be the priority and it must be certain that there are no problems. In some cases, eye and orbital ultrasound might be needed. After a trauma, one of the most essential tests is the orbital tomography. Tomography detects both whether or not there is a loss of unity in the eye and whether or not there is any orbital fractures. It can also show the levels of the fractures. There might also be a need of MR in some cases.
What kinds of orbital fractures need treatment?
- If it causes double vision
- If there is a limit of movement on the eye
- If it causes shrinking on the eye or if there is a possibility of it
- If there is a number of fractures
- If there is sinking on the face and the eye area or if there is a possibility of esthetic deformity in the future treatment is needed.
Is the surgery needed urgently?
On kids, some fractures that causes seeing double and motion limits are urgent and it would be appropriate to fix those with surgery urgently. On adults, however, while the surgery is not extremely urgent, it should be done in one or two weeks.
Treatment
The purpose of the treatment is to save the tissues that get stuck between fractured bones and fixing the bones by bringing them together. Sometimes we need to make use of different materials like plate-screws or porous polytene implant with this aim.