Orbital Pain

Quite a wide variety of clinical problems may present with pain in the orbit. The diversity of this symptom has impressed me for a number of years, and I was moved to collect as many as time would allow for this review. I have included mainly examples of unusual lesions causing pain in the eye, orbit, or periorbita culled from the more recent literature. When possible, I have attempted to express the mechanism by which these various problems at many levels of the head and nervous system express themselves as pain in the eye or orbit. We should begin, however, with a brief review of the trigeminal sensory system. Following this will be a review of some unusual or at least infrequently discussed causes of orbital pain. Common inflammatory, vascular and neoplastic disorders that bring about tissue damage in the orbit or eye will not be discussed in this section, except in reference to some point of special interest.