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.