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

The effect of electric field stimulation for promoting axonal growth between sural to facial nerve grafts in cases of congenital permanent facial palsy associated with hemifacial microsomia was studied. For this purpose, a total of 17 patients with unilateral congenital permanent facial palsy associated with hemifacial microsomia were studied pre- and post-operatively. A sural to facial nerve graft was performed in all cases and long term postoperative electric field stimulation was randomly applied to half of the patients. Although improvement occurred in both groups, the results indicated that clinical and electrophysiological 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.