Characteristics and management of pediatric medial subperiosteal orbital abscesses

Subperiosteal orbital abscesses (SPOA) are the most common suppurative complications of acute bacterial sinusitis. Medial SPOAs arise from infection of the ipsilateral ethmoid sinus and favor initial conservative management reserving surgical drainage for patients who do not demonstrate clinical improvement. No standard algorithm defining medical versus surgical treatment of medial SPOAs exist in the pediatric population. To identify a size cutoff for medial SPOAs to predict the likelihood for surgical drainage. This is a retrospective review of patients with medial SPOAs at a tertiary care center from 2003 to 2017. Diagnosis of SPOA was based on radiographic findings. Variables included are patient demographics, antibiotic therapy, surgical intervention, and length of stay. 82 patients with a medial SPOA were included with an average age at presentation of 6.27 (range 0–15) years were included in this study. 62 patients were male (75.6 %), and 20 were female (24.4 %). The average abscess length was 16.1 mm, range 4.5–30.7 mm. The average abscess width was 4.17 mm, range 1.5–14.6 mm. The odds ratio for surgical treatment with every 1 mm increase in abscess width was 1.89 (95CI:1.33–2.69, p