Limited evidence may support the application of electrical stimulation in the subacute and chronic stages of facial palsy, yet some physiotherapists in South Africa have been applying this modality in the acute stage in the absence of published evidence of clinical efficacy. This preliminary study's aim was to determine the safety and potential efficacy of applying electrical stimulation to the facial muscles during the early phase of Bells palsy. A pretest posttest control vs. experimental groups design composed of 16 patients with Bell's palsy of less than 30 days' duration. Adult patients with clinical diagnosis of Bell's palsy were systematically (every second patient) allocated to the control and experimental groups. Each group (n = 8) was pretested and posttested using the House-Brackmann index. Both groups were treated with heat, massage, exercises, and a home program. The experimental group also received electrical stimulation. The House-Brackmann Scale of the control group improved between 17% and 50% with a mean of 30%. The scores of the experimental group ranged between 17% and 75% with a mean of 37%. The difference between the groups was not statistically significant (two-tailed p = 0.36). Electrical stimulation as used in this study during the acute phase of Bell's palsy is safe but may not have added value over spontaneous recovery and multimodal physiotherapy. A larger sample size or longer stimulation time or both should be investigated.

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Facial (VII th cranial nerve) palsy is a condition that affects 1 in 5000 people worldwide. More recently it has appeared as one form of the  neural manifestations  of  infection  by  the Human  Immunodeficiency Virus. As such it is likely that this condition will feature more prominently in the caseload of physiotherapists.  Therefore the purpose of this paper is to present to physiotherapists existing knowledge on the diagnosis, objective assessment and prognosis of  facial palsy  through a  literature  review. All  available  primary  and  secondary  sources  of  literature  were  obtained through a search of Medline, Sabinet, PEDRO, the Cochrane library and a wide Google search. Objective ways of assessing Bells palsy and its recovery as  used  currently  by  the Belly Palsy Association  and  accepted  by  the American Academy  of Otolaryngology  and Head and Neck, are presented together with diagnosis and prognosis.