Facial taping as biofeedback to improve the outcomes of physical rehab in Bell's palsy: preliminary results of a randomized case-control study

Purpose This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of taping in association with Kabat rehabilitation to ameliorate the outcomes of Bell's palsy. Methods This case-control study was conducted on hospital-outbound patients. 20 patients over 18 years affected from Bell's palsy were recruited at the onset of the disease (< 5 days). Patients were simply randomized into two groups. Patients in group A underwent exclusively Kabat rehabilitation, while patients in group B were treated by combining facial taping and Kabat. Facial palsy severity was evaluated with ADS assessment at baseline (T0), 1 week (T1), 1 month (T2) and 3 months (T3) after treatment. One-way ANOVA was used to compare ADS scores variance between groups to evaluate differences between the two treatments. Results Both groups presented statistically significant differences comparing the baseline with the other observational points (within analysis) (p < 0.0001). Patients in group B showed a statistically significant improvement compared to group A (between analyses) (p < 0.0001), especially at T2 (p < 0.01). Conclusions Facial taping combined with Kabat rehabilitation allowed to reduce the time of recovery and improved the outcomes of Bell's palsy.