Facial muscle reanimation by transcutaneous electrical stimulation for peripheral facial nerve palsy.

Reanimation of paralysed facial muscles by electrical stimulation has been studied extensively in animal models, but human studies in this field are largely lacking. Twenty-four subjects with a peripheral facial nerve palsy with a median duration of three years were enrolled. We studied activations of four facial muscles with electrical stimulation using surface electrodes. In subjects whose voluntary movement was severely impaired or completely absent, the electrical stimulation produced a movement that was greater in amplitude compared with the voluntary effort in 10 out of 18 subjects in the