Correction of post-traumatic enophthalmos with anatomical absorbable implant and iliac bone graft

Trauma is one of the most common causes of enophthalmos, and post-traumatic enophthalmos primarily results from an increased volume of the bony orbit. We achieved good long-term results by simultaneously using an anatomical absorbable implant and iliac bone graft to correct post-traumatic enophthalmos.

From January 2012 to December 2016, we performed operations on seven patients with post-traumatic enophthalmos. In all seven cases, reduction surgery for the initial trauma was performed at our hospital. Hertel exophthalmometry, clinical photography, three-dimensional computed tomography (3D-CT), and orbital volume measurements using software to calculate the specific volume captured on 3D-CT (ITK-SNAP, Insight Toolkit-SNAP) were performed preoperatively and postoperatively.

Patients were evaluated based on exophthalmometry, clinical photographs, 3D-CT, and orbital volume measured by the ITK-SNAP program at 5 days and 1 year postoperatively, and all factors improved significantly compared with the preoperative baseline. Complications such as hematoma or extraocular muscle limitation were absent, and the corrected orbital volume was well maintained at the 1-year follow-up visit.

We present a method to correct enophthalmos by reconstructing the orbital wall using an anatomical absorbable implant and a simultaneous autologous iliac bone graft. All cases showed satisfactory results for enophthalmos correction. We suggest this method as a good option for the correction of post-traumatic enophthalmos.