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Population Diversity in Infraorbital Foramen Location: One Size Fits All?
Author(s) -
Marquez Samuel,
Adar Tony,
Dinescu Laurentiu,
Pagano Anthony
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.864.13
Subject(s) - anatomy , population , crania , mental foramen , geography , medicine , surgery , environmental health , radiography
Precise location of the infraorbital foramen (IO) is of great utility during IO nerve blocks in order to achieve regional anesthesia of the face as the IO nerve supplies large portions of the face including the lower eyelid, nasal alae, and upper lip. Previous studies have quantified distance between the IO and ipsilateral orbital margin (IF‐OM), but few have investigated population differences in this measure. This study used four mixed‐sex samples (each with n=15; 9 males, 6 females) of crania representing Northern European (German), Southern European (Greek), West African (Nigerian), and East Asian (Chinese) populations. Average IF‐OM was 7.4 millimeters with the Chinese exhibiting higher absolute and scaled (over bi‐ectoconchion width) values than German and Greek crania. Nigerians overlapped all other groups in IF‐OM. However, Germans and Nigerians exhibited high coefficients of variation for absolute IF‐OM (27.4 and 27 mm, respectively) while Greeks and Chinese exhibited lower values (16.6 and 16.5, respectively). There were no significant (P<0.05) population differences in asymmetry of this dimension. The results indicate that population diversity does exist in IOF position, which can range from 2.4‐12.2 mm in distance from the orbital rim. Our findings may favor IO nerve block over local tissue infiltration in cases of facial lacerations in which tissue distortion would be undesirable.