How to recover from facial nerve damage

The harm caused by facial nerve damage is quite serious. There are many reasons for facial nerve damage. The most common ones are craniocerebral injury or iatrogenic injury, which often cause damage to the facial nerve. It can also manifest as a variety of symptoms clinically. At this time, timely treatment must be carried out. The most important methods of treatment are surgical treatment and non-surgical treatment. Appropriate methods can be adopted for treatment according to the specific condition.

How to recover from facial nerve damage

Non-surgical treatment (1) Drug treatment ① Hormone drugs can reduce exudation and edema, which is beneficial to nerve recovery; ② Neurotrophic drugs such as vitamin B1 and B12; ③ Nerve growth factor (NGF) can be used systemically or locally for nerve damage; ④ Vasodilators can be used in the early stage; ⑤ Chinese herbal preparations can be used as appropriate; ⑥ Acupuncture treatment. (2) Physical therapy: ① Facial muscle function training is applicable to all stages after nerve injury, mainly including the training of the four main facial muscle motor functional areas of forehead, eyes, nose and lips, which is particularly important 2 weeks to 3 months after injury; ② Ion introduction is applicable to the early stage after nerve injury, mainly including vitamin and iodine ion introduction, which can promote the recovery of nerve function; ③ Nerve electrical stimulation is generally used in the middle and late stages after nerve injury, mainly using multifunctional electrical stimulation; ④ Hyperbaric oxygen can quickly improve the hypoxic state of nerve fibers, relieve edema, enhance the activity of phagocytes and the activity of fibrinolytic enzymes, and promote the functional recovery of the facial nerve.

Surgical treatment (1) Surgical methods Early surgeries mainly consisted of facial nerve decompression. When nerve function did not recover well after surgery, nerve repair was considered. Nerve anastomosis or transplantation was considered only when the facial nerve was completely or nearly completely severed. Other methods include anastomosis of the motor nerves of the facial nerve and other adjacent parts, use of autologous venous sheath to connect the anastomosis and inject nerve growth factor, autologous nerve transplantation, vascularized nerve transplantation, cross-facial nerve transplantation, vascularized free muscle transplantation and vascularized neuralized free muscle transplantation. Currently, Schwann cell-centered neural regeneration microenvironment, tissue engineering neural bridging materials and evaluation systems are the main research contents and hotspots of facial nerve tissue engineering technology.