Long-term facial nerve clinical evaluation following vestibular schwannoma surgery.

BACKGROUND Facial function is important in accompaniment of patients operated on vestibular schwannoma (VS). OBJECTIVE To evaluate long term facial nerve function in patients undergoing VS resection and to correlate tumor size and facial function in a long-term follow-up. METHOD Transversal study of 20 patients with VS operated by the retrosigmoid approach. House-Brackmann Scale was used preoperatively, immediately after surgery and in a long-term follow-up. Student t test was applied for statistic analysis. RESULTS In the immediate postoperative evaluation, 65% of patients presented FP of different grades. Improvement of facial nerve function (at least of one grade) occurred in 53% in the long-term follow-up. There was statistically significant difference in facial nerve outcome in long-term follow-up when tumor size was considered (p<0.05). CONCLUSION The majority of patients had improvement of FP in a long-term follow-up and tumor size was detected to be a factor associated with the postoperative prognostic.