A facial bone finding after a serious accident.
A man in his mid-50s came to see me with facial paralysis on the right side — the muscles were drooping, and he was regularly biting his cheek and tongue on that side without meaning to. A few months earlier, he had been in a motorcycle accident and was knocked unconscious for several hours; he had a small fracture in one of his facial bones. He had been told by his doctors that nothing could be done for the paralysis and that he’d need to live with it.
What I found
On examination, I found that his right zygomatic bone — the cheekbone — appeared to be out of its normal alignment, in a position that seemed capable of placing pressure on nerves supplying that side of the face.
What I did
I adjusted the zygomatic bone. There was an audible change on contact.
What changed
He reported immediate relief of his symptoms, and the facial paralysis resolved. He went on to need additional cranial and facial adjustments over time.
Facial paralysis has a number of possible causes, and this case doesn’t establish that cranial or facial-bone adjustment is an appropriate approach to facial paralysis generally — a thorough medical evaluation is essential, and I would defer to that in any case involving facial paralysis before considering anything else. I include this case because it’s one of the more direct examples I’ve seen of a specific facial-bone finding correlating with a specific neurological symptom.
Related reading
Read about cranial adjusting after head or facial injury, or see more real patient cases.