Blowing Nose Fractures Eye Socket

Be careful blowing your nose.

That is the advice being given by a British doctor after treating a women who blew too hard—and fractured a bone in her left eye socket. Doctors compared the effort she had put into blowing her nose to a sock in the jaw.

According to a report BMJ Case Reports, shortly after forcefully blowing her nose the woman temporarily lost vision in both eyes. Later she developed a swelling around her left eye and her left nostril started to bleed.

A CT bone scan revealed a fracture in her lamina papyracea, her left eye socket.

Sam Myers, M.D., who treated the woman, said, “one of the bones in the floor of the eye socket is thin and can fracture with blunt-force injuries. But this woman actually fractured a neighboring bone, which is a bit thicker and harder to break.”

Myers said that the way the woman blew her nose had something to do with the fracture.

She tended to close off one nostril and then blow forcefully, which, he said, almost doubles the pressure in the sinuses.

Another problem for the patient was the fact that she smoked 20 cigarettes a day. Smoking, according to Myers, changes the pressure in an individual’s sinuses which are located next to the eye sockets.

The woman spent a night in the hospital and was given painkillers and was prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection. Her vision was not permanently affected by the fracture. No surgery required. She still experiences pain on the left side of her head, which will eventually go away as she continues to heal, Myers said.

One silver lining to this bizarre incident—it’s yet another reason to stop smoking and the woman is doing that and…she will be blowing her nose more gently in the future.