Is surgery necessary for facial muscle spasm?

  Facial muscle spasm, the initial symptoms are mostly eyelid jumping, and the folklore is “left eye jumping for money, right eye jumping for disaster”, so people do not pay much attention to it at first. After a period of time, it develops into facial muscle spasm, which is linked to the corners of the mouth and, in severe cases, to the neck. The nature of the onset of the disease is rapid, paroxysmal, irregular twitching, starting mostly from the orbicularis oculi muscle, and then involving the entire face. The condition can be aggravated by fatigue, stress and voluntary movements.  Most patients with facial spasms cannot be solved at the root of the problem by conservative treatments such as oral medications, acupuncture and botulinum toxin injections alone. Drugs are long-term, dependent, and have little effect; acupuncture is effective for some people at the time, but later relapses can be powerful. Botox injections can control the symptoms of facial muscle spasm in the short term, but prolonged injections will produce drug resistance, and the treatment effect will become worse and worse.  Facial muscle spasm mostly occurs after middle and old age, commonly in women. The main reason for the occurrence of facial muscle spasm is the presence of compression factors in the brainstem area of the facial nerve, 80% to 90% of which is the compression of blood vessels. Therefore, surgical release of vascular compression of the nerve should be a priority treatment option for physicians. Microvascular decompression is a minimally invasive surgery with good results in treating facial spasm. The principle of the surgery is: an incision of about 3-5 cm is made behind the patient’s ear, and then the root of the facial nerve is explored with the help of a microscope to effectively release the compression of the facial nerve by blood vessels, and the surgery is completed by using a special medical material to pad between the nerve and the blood vessels. The procedure is completed by placing a special medical material between the nerve and the blood vessel.