Abstract

Background: Lymphedema (LE) as well as facial palsy´s (FP) are relatively common disease.

FP can be divided into idiopathic FP (Bell´s palsy) and secondary FP due to a determined reason like trauma. The most common reasons of secondary FP are metabolic disease, tumours, infections, neurological disorders, autoimmune disorders, trauma and surgical interventions.

LE is a high protein edema. The most common reasons for a secondary LE are lymphatic filariasis, irradiation and surgical interventions.

Report: A 51 year old male with uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and a hypersensitivity lung disease (HLD) presented with 3 days fever and cellulitis in his face. He developed a very extensive LE and becomes septic (in the cours, he needs pressors and intubation for airway protection). The rapid streptococcal test was positive.

In the examination, we diagnosed then a dense, painless facial nerve palsy in all branches on the left (except his marginal branch).

Conclusion: In our knowledge, this is the first publication which reports, that a LE causes a secondary FP.

Due to the fact, that both LE and FP are not so rarely seen disorders, our goal is to sensitise other physicians about the possibility of a casual coherence between them; that may be of important relevance for the outcome of the patients.

Keywords: Facial Paralysis; Bells Palsy; Lymphedema; Cellulitis; Infection Disease; Autoimmune Disease

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Citation

Citation: Salvatore Bühling. “Post-infectious Lymphedema Can Cause Facial Paralysis"..Acta Scientific Otolaryngology 3.2 (2020): 90-96.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Salvatore Bühling. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.