Gold Weight Lid Implant for the Management of Facial Nerve Palsy

Woo, Je Moon; Jeong, Sang Ki; Park, Yeoung Geol

Abstract

We reported our experiences with 23 patients with established facial nerve palsy who had a total of 23 gold weights inserted between January 1993 and March 1995. Ten patients of them underwent lateral tarsal stripping for treatment of lower eye lid ectropion at the same time. Functional improvement i.e. reduction of lagophthalmos and restoration of the blink reflex was good in all cases except 1 patient. Especially, patients who underwent gold weight within 6 months from onset of the palsy and patients who underwent lateral tarsal stripping at the same time revealed much better surgical results. Complications of gold implant were exposure of the implant, visibility through the thin upper eye lid skin and cosmetic problem due to bulky mass of upper eye lid. In 2 patients, the gold weights were removed due to implant exposure, but in one patient of the two, exposed gold was reimplanted after the managenent of wound infecton but the other refused our recommend of reimplant. We reported that gold weight implant is good surgical method for treatment of facial nerve palsy with lagopthalmos.