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.