[Orbital trauma inflicted by a butcher's knife without any injury of the eyeball].

We present a 25 year old man, who suffered from an apparently serious orbital injury inflicted by a butcher's knife during a fight. The knife perforated the upper lid of the right eye, and than penetrated the orbita along its medial wall into the right maxillary sinus, the ethmoid sinus, finally reaching the left maxillary sinus. The eye bulb, as well as the optic nerve and the muscles remained intact. A major hemorrhage from the nasal cavity, which occurred immediately after the extraction of the knife, was managed successfully by means of anterior and posterior nasal packing. Intranasal synechias developed in the days following the injury, leading to obstruction of the nasal cavities. The synechias were later almost entirely eliminated through appropriate treatment, leaving the patient with practically no complications of this dramatic injury.