Blowout Fracture

This week, I decided to find out some more information on blowout fractures of the orbit. A blowout fracture often results when there is some type of trauma to the medial wall or floor of the orbit. This often causes an increase in intraorbital pressure. Blowout fractures most often occur as a result of a motor vehicle accident or an altercation.

Most of the time when a person experiences a blowout fracture of the medial wall of the orbit, they will have some other type of facial fracture, either of the nose or cheekbone. A "pure" orbital blowout fracture is most often a fracture of only the floor of the orbit.

While the fracture itself is a problem, the most worrisome complications of a blowout fracture occur when the soft tissues of the eye herniate down into the maxillary sinuses or when air becomes trapped in the orbit leading to an increase in intraorbital pressure. This increase in pressure can cause the inferior rectus muscle to become compressed reducing motion of the eye. The person may also suffer from a "black eye", double vision, enophthalmos (a condition where the eyeball is drawn back into the orbital cavity), and nosebleeds along with many other complications.

The modality of choice for imaging an orbital blowout fracture is CT. Both bone and soft tissue windows should be used to see the fracture itself and to see the resulting soft tissue complications. The most common treatment of a blowout fracture is surgical repair.

I found the information for this posting on e-radiography.net, wikipedia.com, emedicine.com, and from our lecture notes.