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Clinical Trial
. 2014:2014:801971.
doi: 10.1155/2014/801971. Epub 2014 Nov 27.

Bell's palsy: symptoms preceding and accompanying the facial paresis

Daniele De Seta  1 , Patrizia Mancini  1 , Antonio Minni  1 , Luca Prosperini  2 , Elio De Seta  1 , Giuseppe Attanasio  1 , Edoardo Covelli  1 , Andrea De Carlo  1 , Roberto Filipo  1
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Bell's palsy: symptoms preceding and accompanying the facial paresis

Daniele De Seta et al. ScientificWorldJournal. 2014.

Abstract

This individual prospective cohort study aims to report and analyze the symptoms preceding and accompanying the facial paresis in Bell's palsy (BP). Two hundred sixty-nine patients affected by BP with a maximum delay of 48 hours from the onset were enrolled in the study. The evolution of the facial paresis expressed as House-Brackmann grade in the first 10 days and its correlation with symptoms were analyzed. At the onset, 136 patients presented postauricular pain, 114 were affected by dry eye, and 94 reported dysgeusia. Dry mouth was present in 54 patients (19.7%), facial pain, hyperlacrimation, aural fullness, and hyperacusis represented a smaller percentage of the reported symptoms. After 10 days, 39.9% of the group had a severe paresis while 10.2% reached a complete recovery. Dry mouth at the onset was correlated with severe grade of palsy and was prognostic for poor recovery in the early period. These outcomes lead to the deduction that the nervus intermedius plays an important role in the presentation of the BP and it might be responsible for most of the accompanying symptomatology of the paresis. Our findings could be of important interest to early address a BP patient to further examinations and subsequent therapy.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of the severity of the facial paresis according to House-Brackmann (HB) facial grading scale at the onset and after 10 days.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Onset symptoms and accompanying symptoms over the study group. Paresis is represented only as onset symptom since the whole number of patients will eventually develop facial numbness.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) algorithm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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