Treatment Options for Orbital Fractures
I’m Ed Smith, a Sacramento Personal Injury Lawyer. When a patient is diagnosed with an orbital fracture, the next task is going to be treatment. The steps involved will include both immediate management and long-term correction.
The First Steps
When a patient comes in suffering traumatic injuries, including eye trauma, the first step is going to be clinical stabilization. If the patient has suffered other major injuries along with their orbital fracture, the bleeding will need to be controlled first. This will involve applying pressure to the wound, starting IV fluids, and calling the blood bank to order blood products. The physician will need to manage the patient’s pain using analgesics and will also need to prevent an infection from developing using antibiotics. Once the patient has been stabilized, imaging can be obtained to plan for surgical correction of the orbital fracture.
Surgical Correction
Once a surgical plan has been formulated, the patient will proceed to the operating room in order to set the orbit. The surgeon will first peel back the skin to reveal the bone fractures that need to be corrected. The surgeon will reduce the fracture by placing the bones back in alignment. If pieces of bone appear to be missing, the surgeon may graft bone from elsewhere to fill in the gaps. The surgeon will fixate the bones in place, potentially using hardware. He or she will check and make sure that the soft tissue is in its proper location before closing the surgical field. A plastic surgeon may be contacted for aesthetic reasons. The goal will be to make the patient’s face look as symmetrical as possible.
Long-Term Therapy for Orbital Fractures
It is possible that the patient may have some long-term complications and comorbidities from trauma to the nerves of the eye, such as the infraorbital nerve or the optic nerve itself. While some nerve injuries are permanent, others can be fixed with rehabilitation of peripheral nerve injuries. This therapy can help the patient regain strength in the movements of the eye and strengthen the pupil for use later. Patients may also notice some blood spots in the globe of the eye from damaged vessels; however, these will heal with time. The prognosis for patients has been improving with the use of 3D CT scanning; however, many patients continue to deal with permanent blindness in their injured eye even after repair of an orbital fracture.
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Sacramento Personal Injury Lawyers
I’m Ed Smith, a Sacramento Personal Injury Lawyer. The treatment of orbital fractures will vary widely based on the type of the fracture and the severity of the injury. Anyone who has suffered an orbital fracture should call me at (916) 921-6400 for friendly, free advice. You may also call me toll-free at (800) 404-5400.
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Image Attribution: Eye.jpg ~ public domain image via Wikimedia Commons
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