Patient question: “I have been suffering from facial muscle spasm for more than a year, recently I took carbamazepine, I feel a little lighter than before, can I be cured by taking this medicine?” The doctor’s answer: facial muscle spasm at the beginning of the disease, you can eat some carbamazepine and other anti-epileptic drugs, to relieve the symptoms of facial muscle spasm has a certain degree of help, but can not be cured, once the drug is discontinued after the muscle spasm is likely to recur. In addition, long-term medication can have certain side effects on the patient’s body, including dizziness, liver damage, white blood cell decline, etc. The time and severity of these side effects vary depending on individual differences, so patients with facial myospasm should be checked regularly while taking medication. Facial myospasm is a chronic, progressive disease that starts in the eyelids and spreads to other facial muscles. Facial myospasm is mostly caused by the compression of the facial nerve roots by blood vessels. When an attack occurs, it is characterized by frequent and rapid twitching of the facial muscles, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes, and can be tonic in severe cases. Facial muscle spasm not only affects the patient’s image, but also causes low self-esteem and anxiety. Causes of facial spasm The facial nerve is one of the twelve pairs of brain nerves in the cranium, which emanates from the facial nerve nucleus at the brainstem and, after traveling through the cranium, sends out multiple branches to innervate the activities of the entire facial muscle. According to the pathogenesis of facial spasm, during the intracranial travel of facial nerve, the facial nerve root is compressed by the abnormal travel vessels of vertebrobasilar artery system, which results in demyelination, short circuiting of impulses between afferent and efferent nerve fibers, abnormal increase of excitability of facial nerve motor nucleus and facial spasm. The only way to completely cure facial spasm is microvascular decompression surgery, a minimally invasive procedure that directly finds the blood vessel that is compressing the facial nerve through a microscope, and separates the facial nerve from the blood vessel through a special spacer, so that there is no compression between the facial nerve and the blood vessel, the source of the pulsation stimulation disappears, the facial nerve transmission returns to normal, and the facial twitching naturally disappears. The surgery is performed under general anesthesia. A very small incision is made in the hairline behind the ear, and the blood vessel responsible for the compression of the facial nerve is located, separated and isolated under a microscope. The functional neurosurgery department of Shanxi Provincial People’s Hospital adopts neurophysiological monitoring technology during the operation, which can directly understand the integrity of the nerve function and the completeness of decompression during the operation, reduce the chance of nerve damage and guarantee the quality of the operation, and patients can choose to undergo treatment with peace of mind.