The Bell Tolls for Decompression?

The petrous pyramid of the temporal bone has long hidden the secrets of the facial nerve — so effectively that in considering this region, researchers have found it difficult to separate fact from fancy. During the first decades of this century, the most prolific writers about the age-old disease that is known as idiopathic facial paralysis (Bell's palsy) were neurologists; Waterman's1 article, published in 1909, remains a classic. Since 1932, when Ballance and Duel2 introduced surgical decompression of the facial nerve, otolaryngologists have largely dispossessed the neurologists of their therapeutic primacy with respect to this disease.Surgical treatment of Bell's . . .