Isolated Orbital Fracture - Treatment and Outcomes in a Single Tertiary Care Centre

Retrospective, questionnaire survey.

The literature lacks a consensus on treatment of isolated orbital fracture. Our aim was to explore treatment schemes and outcomes of patients with isolated orbital fracture treated at a single tertiary care centre.

We performed a retrospective chart review and a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. We reviewed the medical records of all patients diagnosed with isolated orbital fracture at an outpatient referral clinic in an urban university hospital between 2010 and 2016. We included only patients with isolated inferior, medial, or inferomedial orbital fracture in the study cohort. We sent a questionnaire to these patients to assess the prevalence and severity of long-term symptoms.

We included 246 patients in the study cohort, of which 96 (39%) were treated surgically and 150 (61%) non-surgically. Median time from injury to surgery was 11 days (range = 0-44, IQR = 8,15), and to sending the questionnaire 44 months (range = 16-93). The questionnaire was completed by 89 patients (36%), of whom 51 (57%) reported at least one mild long-term symptom, 24 (27%) at least one moderate long-term symptom, and 17 (19%) at least one severe long-term symptom.

Patients with isolated orbital fracture treated at our unit reported severe long-term symptoms more frequently than would have been expected based on earlier research. Patients at our unit were treated surgically more often than in other similar units, which suggests that surgical treatment may be chosen over non-surgical treatment unnecessarily often at our unit.