Bell's Palsy and COVID-19 Infection: A Comparative Analysis with the Pre-pandemic Period

ABSTRACT

Aim: Bell's palsy is an acute peripheral facial nerve paralysis affecting one side of the face and can be associated with various causes, such as infectious and autoimmune conditions. In line with this, an increase has been observed in the incidence of peripheral facial paralysis during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) infection pandemic. We aimed to investigate whether the incidence of Bell's palsy increased before and after the COVID-19 in the pre-vaccine period. Method(s) All cases diagnosed with Bell's palsy in a tertiary hospital aged 18 and up in 2020 were analyzed, and to compare these numbers to pre-pandemic numbers, patients' data from 2019 was accessed. Excluding those who had recurrent facial palsy, those whose conditions were due to central causes, and those who were misdiagnosed, the frequency of the disease was calculated by proportioning it to the total number of patients presenting to Neurology, and Ear, Nose, and Throat Diseases Outpatient Clinics and the Green Zone of the Emergency Department at that time;and the Bell's palsy distribution within three-month periods and whether this distribution is correlated with the distribution of COVID-19 infection were examined. Result(s) Three hundred twenty five cases from 2019 and 291 cases from 2020 were included in the study. No significant difference was detected between those years in terms of age and sex. The frequency of Bell's palsy in 2019 was 0.059% while it was 0.071% in 2020, which suggested a significant difference between the years. The significant difference could be clearly observed in the second and fourth quarters when the cases of COVID-19 infection were at their peak. Conclusion(s) This study suggests that patients with complaints of peripheral facial paralysis should also be examined for COVID-19 infection. Copyright © 2022, Galenos Publishing House. All rights reserved.