An intraorbital wooden foreign body: description of a case and a variety of CT appearances

Abstract

We present a case report in which a 4-year-old girl was involved in a fall that resulted in an injury of the right orbita. The girl kept a chopstick in her right hand that got into the right orbita due to this accident. Only a fraction remained in the orbita; the residual chopstick got lost. Hence, the substance of the chopstick was unknown. Computed tomography (CT) revealed a foreign body in the right orbita, but ophthalmologists had initially no indication of intervention. Further course according to the follow-up CT showed an increase of Hounsfield units (HU). These findings led to the assumption that the foreign body was made of wood. Through this, the ophthalmologists performed an evacuation. Motivated by these clinical results, we created an experimental setup that could demonstrate changes of HU in different coated chopsticks. It is concluded that wooden foreign bodies can display a variety of CT appearances depending on materials, types, coating, and time-course.