Recovery of congenital facial palsy in patients with hemifacial microsomia subjected to sural to facial nerve grafts is enhanced by electric field stimulation

ABSTRACT

The effect of electric field stimulation for promoting axonal growth between sural to facial nerve graft in cases of congenital permanent facial palsy associated with hemifacial microsomia was studied pre- and postoperatively. A sural to facial nerve graft was performed in all cases and long term postoperative electric field stimulation was randomly applied to half to the patients. Although improvement occurred in both groups, the results indicated that clinical and elctrophysiological recovery was significantly better in patients receiving post-operative electric field stimulation. The results, therefore, suggest that electric stimulation of the grafted area induces improvements of facial palsy over and above those observed in the non-stimulated patients