Implications of Facial Nerve Landmarks In Parotid Surgery
The facial nerve weakness post parotid surgery can result from a combination of trauma while dissecting right on the nerve, traction injury to the nerve, heat injury secondary to use of electrocautery and prolonged operating time. We tried to study the one factor i.e. the operating time. Total of 30 patients admitted in the ENT department between year 2014 and 2018, undergoing parotid surgery for benign pathology by the same primary surgeon were selected. Facial nerve was identified in each by antegrade method. In first ten (10) patients, tragal pointer was used to identify facial nerve and for further twenty (20) cases, posterior belly digastric was used for the identification. Average time taken using tragal pointer as the landmark was 39.7 minutes and average time taken using posterior belly of digastric was 20.65 minutes. P value was found to be significant ( < 0.01) by using both independent sample t test and one way ANOVA test. We found that time taken using posterior belly of digastric as landmark was significantly shorter than tragal pointer. Hence we can control the operating time by using posterior belly of digastric as the primary landmark for facial nerve identification.