In Leprosy, surgery of the face is no luxury. In the rehabilitation of the patient, a deformity which renders him conspicuous can prevent his being accepted in society, especially if this deformity is recognized by society and feared.
With the advances made in reconstructive surgery and increasing interest in social rehabilitation, it is important at this stage to have a better understanding of the incidence of the facial paralysis which will need surgery in some form or other for their correction.
But full scale of information concerning incidence, type and soforth are not established until to date.
-This paper is the result obtained from analyses of facial paralysis among 1, 010 Leprosy patients hospitalized in the National Leprosorium of the Sorok Island.
The results are followings;
1) The incidence of facial paralysis is 43.8%.
Females are more often affected than males (41% for males, 47.5°0 for females).
2) The incidence of Lagophthalmos is 40.6%.
This rate is significantly higher among borderline type(57. 6%) than Lepromatous (38.33p) and Tuberculoid type(41%), (P<0.05)
3) The incidence of Lower facial paralysis is 36.2°0.
4) There is an increasing tendency in the incidence of facial paralysis with age. 5) There are more facial paralysis among bacilli negative cases than among bacilli positive cases.
6) Occurrence of combined laguphthalmos and lower facial paralysis is much higher than solitary paralysis.
7) Upper lips are more often affected than lower lips in the lower facial paralysis.
8) For the correction of lagophthalmos and Lower facial paralysis, combining of static sling and dynamic sling is desirable.
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