[The surgical approach to invasive orbital tumors]

The orbital exenteration is less and less practiced today, because of the reduced pathology which may impose such a radical intervention, but also because it has been transferred, in the lest two decades, to the maxillofacial plastic surgery. The paper presents three orbital exenterations, accomplished in the spinous-cell carcinoma of the inferior eye lid invading in the orbit, basal-cell epithelioma of internal angle recidivated during repeated interventions and conjunctival malignant melanoma invading the orbit. It is shown that orbital exenteration must not to abandoned by the ophthalmologists, which are the first doctors contracted by these patients and the only ones which can decide when the ocular globe may be sacrificed, with a recovery of the region as aesthetic as can be.