Why is surgery necessary to treat facial spasms?

  Facial muscle spasm is often manifested as paroxysmal, involuntary muscle spasms on one side of the face. The twitching mostly starts from around the eyes and gradually expands downward, affecting the perioral and facial expression muscles, and in severe cases, it can involve the ipsilateral neck muscles. The seizure time also ranges from several seconds to several minutes each time, and in severe cases, the twitching can be non-stop throughout the day, even during sleep. It directly affects the patient’s work or study, emotions, and destroys his physical and mental health.  Patients with facial muscle spasm generally do not feel pain, often appear abnormal twitching of facial muscles, affecting their face, often wrongly believe that they can not be treated, but long-term twitching without treatment may not only affect the face, but also may lead to other complications.  Most of them do not have positive neurological signs, and some of them can be seen as peripheral facial paralysis caused by long-term illness or botulinum toxin injection.  The main drugs used clinically to treat facial spasm are phenytoin sodium and carbamazepine, but they may be effective for some mild patients, while long-term use has little effect and can only temporarily relieve some mild symptoms of facial spasm. It can only temporarily relieve some minor symptoms of facial spasm. Moreover, long-term medication is required, and long-term medication has serious toxic side effects.  Microvascular decompression is the only method to treat the cause of the disease, and is a widely used treatment for facial muscle spasm. Its advantage is that it is an effective long-term solution for facial pain or facial twitching, and maintains the anatomical integrity of the nerve, thus maintaining normal nerve function, changing the facial dysfunction that occurred after other previous treatments, and improving the patient’s quality of life. Under general anesthesia, the patient is placed behind the ear on the side of the lesion, and the “responsible vessel” for the lesion is reached under the microscope, isolating the nerve from the vessel and achieving a complete cure.