Facial Nerve Palsy & Bell’s Palsy
Facial rehabilitation for longstanding changes
The vast majority of patients with facial nerve palsy, especially the Bell’s Palsy type, go on to make a complete recovery. However a small proportion of patients will continue to have long term functional and/or cosmetic problems e.g. watering eyes, drooping brows and cheeks, sore red eye due to lagophthalmos.
Facial Spasms
A small minority of patients can develop abnormal involuntary twitches, tics or spasms of the facial muscles following facial nerve palsy. Different patterns of twitching can develop e.g. blepharospasm, hemifacial spasm.
Botulinum Toxin (Botox, Dysport) injections are often very helpful in paralysing the affected twitching muscles. These injections although temporary, requiring repeat injection (usually every 3-6 months), are often very well tolerated providing welcome symptomatic relief.
Surgical Rehabilitation
Oculoplastic surgeons such as Mr Cheung offer different many types of operations to help the rehabilitation of patients with facial nerve palsy. Each patient needs to be treated on an individual basis. Different patients with facial nerve palsy will have different clinical features with varying severity of problems.
Click here for a photo gallery of facial nerve palsy patients and the benefits of surgical rehabilitation