Abstract

Facial paralysis (FP) is a very common disease that affects face muscles. Physiotherapy is very important in its treatment. The purpose of this work is to study how different methods work in patients with this condition.

About 1000 subjects with facial paralysis in many hospitals of Santiago were used to try different ways to be treated. These methods were: electrotherapy, manual massages, kabat rehabilitation, facial palsy exercises and no treatment as a control. About 85% of patients treated with electrotherapy didn't show any recovery, electricity in the most of cases just relieved the pain, but didn’t recover mobility of muscles. Manual massages were too effective in rehabilitation, 60% of the patients showed almost a total recovery. Kabat rehab. And FP exercises threw similar results as manual massages, about 60% - 70% of the patients showed total recovery. Control patients haven’t shown any recovery without treatment, but a minimal percentage of them showed a partial recuperation.

According to these results, Physiotherapy is a good way to treat FP. In almost all of the treatments used, the percentage of recovery was very high. Excepting for electrotherapy that almost didn't show any influence in the recuperation, the other three forms of treatment were very effective. Related to this, we can see that physiotherapy is very influential in recuperation of FP, but is not essential to that, it can be used to bring a faster recovery of this condition, but not always is a necessary way to do it.

Keywords: Facial paralysis - Physiotherapy