ABSTRACT
Silent sinus syndrome is defined as a spontaneous and progressive enophthalmos and hypoglobus with hypoplasia of the maxillary sinus and resorption of the orbital floor. It is caused by atelectasis of the maxillary sinus in the presence of ipsilateral chronic hypoventilation of the sinus. The problem may be idiopathic, but the term is now also used to describe cases that follow operation or trauma. We describe three cases, each with a different aetiology, and discuss the clinical and radiographic evaluation of the condition, theories regarding its pathophysiology, and surgical correction.
Subject(s)
Maxillary Sinus/pathology , Paranasal Sinus Diseases/diagnosis , Adult , Bone Resorption/etiology , Decompression, Surgical/adverse effects , Diplopia/etiology , Endoscopy/methods , Enophthalmos/etiology , Eye Diseases/etiology , Facial Asymmetry/etiology , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Graves Disease/surgery , Humans , Male , Maxillary Sinus/surgery , Middle Aged , Orbital Diseases/etiology , Paranasal Sinus Diseases/complications , Paranasal Sinus Diseases/surgery , Postoperative Complications , Pressure , SyndromeABSTRACT
Some patients are concerned that after satisfactory healing of a mandibular fracture the jaw will be weaker than it was before the injury, and will break readily at the same site after relatively minor injury. We aimed to find out if these concerns have any basis, and report the pattern of fracture in a series of nine patients who had sustained fractures of the jaw on two separate occasions. All fractures were at different sites from the original ones, and in only one case was the fracture adjacent to plates that had been placed previously. Once a mandibular fracture has healed, the bone at the fracture site is not obviously weaker from a clinical perspective than it was before the injury.
Subject(s)
Fracture Healing , Mandible/physiology , Mandibular Fractures/surgery , Adolescent , Adult , Dental Stress Analysis , Fracture Fixation, Internal , Humans , Male , Prognosis , Recurrence , Retrospective Studies , Young AdultABSTRACT
UNLABELLED: Infective and neoplastic swellings of the face are common. Often, the differential diagnosis is obvious, but sometimes it can be difficult to ascertain. We report the case of a cheek swelling thought to be infective in origin, but this unusual lesion turned out to be a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. This was found to be a solitary cutaneous lesion, with associated submandibular lymphadenopathy. The initial plan was for treatment with chemo-radiotherapy, however, the lesion has, surprisingly, begun to resolve spontaneously following biopsy. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The most frequent cause of facial swellings presenting to dentists is infective, usually from dental sources, but other causes of facial swelling do need to be considered.
