Orbital tumors in children.

There are many reviews of pediatric orbital tumors in the literature. Most of the series originated from the tumor registries of large pathology referral centers, whereas others are from large medical institutions and pediatric hospitals. The distribution of types of tumors reported in each series are unavoidably biased by the nature of the evaluating facility. The findings were also affected by the geographic location of the clinical facility. We present an analysis of 141 orbital tumors in children and review 9 other series (totaling 1,229 cases) for an aggregate total of 1,370 cases. Our clinically based series had an incidence of malignant lesions of 10.6%, much lower than the 24% incidence among the combined referral center/pediatric hospital studies. Cystic orbital and vasculogenic tumors were the most common, comprising 58% of our cases and 40% of orbital tumors in children among the combined series.