Myositis complicating orbital cellulitis: A case report

Abstract

Orbital myositis (OM) is a noninfectious, inflammatory disease of the extraocular muscles. Though generally idiopathic in origin, OM may be also secondary to systemic and infectious diseases. Various cases have been reported occuring after respiratory tract infections or together with subclinical sinusitis. Clinical features of OM are pain worsening with eye movement, periorbital edema, conjonctival hyperemia and edema, diplopia and proptosis. Since OM has clinically similar findings with infectious conditions such as orbital cellulitis, differentiating the two may be difficult especially at early stage. In this article, we report a case of orbital cellulitis caused by acute sinusitis and complicated with myositis first affecting medial rectus muscle and then other ocular muscles. Because of the difficulty to differentiate orbital myositis and cellulitis clinically, essential points to be noted in the differential diagnosis of these conditions have been discussed in the view of literature.

Keywords

• orbital myositis
• orbital cellulitis
• sinusitis