Why facial muscle spasm surgery is not a cure for all patients

  Patients with facial spasm are looking forward to a “cure” after receiving “microvascular surgery”, but in fact, the “cure rate” of this disease cannot reach 100%. This can cause patients to feel frustrated and hopeless that they have spent their money and suffered for nothing, and some patients may even resent their doctors because of the poor treatment results.  Why does the surgery fail? The level and experience of the attending surgeon are important, but some special circumstances can lead to increased inefficiency, which are briefly analyzed as follows: 1. The inefficiency is highest when the vessel force is too large to be pushed away by current surgical methods, and the most common cases are those in which the facial nerve root receives compression from the thick vertebrobasilar artery. 2.  2. The responsible vascular collaterals are too long, and the implanted pad cotton cannot hold the vascular collaterals firmly in place, which can slip with the pulsation of the vessels and brain tissue, leading to postoperative inefficiency.  3, Difficulty in the handling of the vessel that wraps around the nerve is also one of the reasons for ineffectiveness.  4, The responsible vessel has a thin branch into the facial and auditory nerve, as this branch is tiny, but it is the terminal trophoblastic artery supplying the facial and auditory nerve and cannot be damaged, otherwise permanent facial palsy, hearing damage or even brainstem infarction will occur, which makes the responsible vessel compressing the facial nerve unable to lift and easily leads to ineffective surgery.  5. For those with narrow space in the surgical area, the lack of space for the responsible vessel to push is also one of the common reasons for ineffective surgery.  It is important to emphasize that every doctor wants his patient to recover and does not want to have complications, even the so-called “bad moral” doctors. It is the wish of every doctor to achieve a 100% cure rate for facial spasms, but effective risk control and reduction of complications are more important to the life of the patient, so The “cure rate” is not the only criterion to evaluate the success of the surgery.  It is recommended that patients should fully understand the risks and knowledge of this surgery before receiving treatment, and be fully prepared psychologically.