Surfing accidents may cause significant facial trauma. Over the past several months, the weather has been good, the water warm, and the frequency of surfing accidents has been high. The impact of a surfboard to the face can cause a lateral orbital wall and medial orbital wall blowout fracture as depicted here in the 3D CT-SCAN reconstruction. Synthes titanium microplates were uses to repair the lateral orbital wall fracture.
I have found that autologous ear cartilage is an excellent substitute to cranial bone graft in that the harvest is less traumatic and the curvature of the ear cartilage closely matches that of the medial orbital wall and orbital floor.
