Sino-orbital polyposis.

A 70-year-old woman with a long history of nasal and sinus polyps developed bilateral proptosis and left total external ophthalmoplegia. She was known to have hypercalcemia, which was later discovered to be caused by a parathyroid adenoma. X-ray studies, including computerized tomography, revealed increased radiodensity in the ethmoid sinuses (due to dystrophic calcification from the hypercalcemia), partial absence of the orbital walls from earlier surgical procedures, and bilateral rounded, retrobulbar tumors. At surgery, glistening, yellow, transparent, and encapsulated-lobulated masses were removed from the left orbit; they appeared to have prolapsed through a postsurgical dehiscence in the superomedial orbital wall. Light and electron microscopy confirmed that the lesional tissue represented polyps covered by respiratory epithelium; the yellow color was the consequence of secondary lipidization of the stromal fibroblasts.