The treatment of short-term steroids for extremely elderly patients with Bell's palsy

Abstract

Bell's palsy has a good outcome and Stennert reported a high cure rate in the treatment of high-dose steroids. However, advanced age is thought to be one of the poor prognostic factors. Therefore, we applied the treatment of high-dose steroids to elderly patients with Bell's palsy, although elderly patients have a higher incidence of adverse effects on drug therapy than younger patients. We compared the treatment results in six extremely elderly patients with Bell's palsy. Four of six patients had complete hemifacial palsy. All patients were cured with high-dose steroids. A short course of treatment did not lead to the development of any side effects. These results suggest that we should treat extremely elderly patients suffering from Bell's palsy aggressively with the short-term treatment of high-dose steroids.