Orbital volume changes during growth and development in human children assessed using cone beam computed tomography

Abstract

Objectives To measure growth-related changes in orbital volume from childhood to the late teenage years using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans. Methods This retrospective cohort study involved 65 (24 male, 41 female) healthy Caucasian children (ages 6–18 years) with existing serial craniofacial CBCT scans. CBCT scans were available for 292 orbits. Each orbit was transformed into a closed space with well-defined boundaries, and orbital volume was measured using manual segmentation. A novel statistical analysis was applied to extract the maximum amount of longitudinal information from the data. Intra- and inter-operator correlation coefficients were calculated from replications performed on a random subset of 10% of the sample. Results Orbital volume increased at a rate of 1–2% annually until the late teenage years. Intra- and inter-operator agreement between repeated measurements were >90%. Conclusions Orbital volume increases by 1–2% per year throughout childhood continuing until the late teenage years. This annual increase is large enough to be clinically relevant as it may lead to less-than-optimal long term surgical outcomes when reconstructive surgery for the pediatric anophthalmic socket is required.

Subperiosteal and Orbital Abscesses: A Comparison of Clinical Features, Management, and Outcomes

“…11,25 Given the physiologic growth of orbital volume with increasing age, pediatric abscess volumes intuitively are smaller than those of adolescent and adult abscesses. 20 The authors found mean OA volume to be significantly larger than SPA volume in an age-controlled comparison. OA volume ranged from 0.72 to 142.0 cm 3 while SPA volume ranged from 0.10 to 63.8 cm 3 .…”

“…Given the association between age and orbital volume, a nonparametric regression was used to compare abscess volume between groups and control for age at presentation. 20 Traditional guidelines for surgical intervention in SPA management also vary by age, warranting a multiple logistic regression model to control for age at presentation when surgical intervention rate was compared between groups. 21 An α of 0.05 indicated statistical significance.…”

“…Statistical analyses were conducted using R (R Core Team, 2021). 19 The χ 2 tests were used to compare nominal factors between groups, while Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare continuous factors. Fishers exact tests were used for cell sizes less than 5.…”

Ontogenetic changes in functional matrices and facial bone remodeling

“…However, Bentley et al (2002) estimated a model of agerelated changes in orbital volume in children from 0 to 15 years old and observed a linear growth rate of orbital volume throughout the age range studied, contradicting earlier models that tended to emphasize a growth curve of exponential decay, with a 77% of the total volume attained at five years. Also, a caucasian sample of children between 6-18 years shows an increase of the orbital volume in 1-2% per year throughout childhood until the late teens (Smith, 2020). Such differences in the pattern of growth of the orbital capsule may be accounted for by the measuring methods and sample composition used in each case.…”

Long term follow‐up of axial length and orbital dimensions in congenital microphthalmia and anophthalmia

“…In our cohort with these anomalies, we saw that older orbits did not grow anymore after the age of 6.5, in contrast to the changes seen in younger subjects, especially when 3D‐printed conformer therapy was started before the age of 1. Some studies suggest the orbit stops growing at age 5–6, others show a 1%–2% volume increase per year through late adolescence years, and again others have shown that orbital growth is not linear but sinusoid with fast and slow phases (Farkas et al., 1992; Smith et al., 2022; Waitzman et al., 1992; Wei et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2022).…”