A droopy smile!
Medgeeks with Andrew Reid
Medgeeks
4.8 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2019
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Your next patient is a 25 year old man who called in to make a same day appointment.
He has no past medical history, but you know him pretty well. He's always been a bit of a hypochondriac, so you figure it's probably nothing major.
When you walk in the room, the patient smiles, and you shake hands.
That's when you notice...
Today, we'll be talking Bells Palsy.
What is it, how do we diagnose, and how do we treat?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your next patient is a 25 year old man who called in to make a same day appointment with you. |
| 0:04.5 | He's got no past medical history, but you know him pretty well. He's always been a bit of a |
| 0:09.2 | hypochondriac in your opinion, so you figure it's probably nothing major. |
| 0:12.2 | When you walk into the room, you and the patient smile and shake hands and that's when you first |
| 0:16.2 | notice that the left side of his face is drooping. Hello and welcome everybody to the med geeks podcast my name is Eric Gordon and I'm glad you're with us again for another episode |
| 0:36.9 | Today we're gonna be talking about Bell's palsy. What is it? How do we diagnose it? How do we treat it? |
| 0:43.0 | Later in the show I'll be answering a question sent in about acute kidney injury and a follow-up question from last week's episode on diabetic ketoacidosis. |
| 0:51.0 | So let's jump in. |
| 0:52.0 | Raise your hand if someone with facial droop scares you a little bit. |
| 0:57.0 | Every person in this room is raising their hand right now. |
| 1:00.0 | And while it's true, I'm the only person in this room right now. I think most of you listening would probably agree that when you encounter someone with Bell's palsy can be a little bit nerve-wracking, especially if it's your first or second or 14th time making the diagnosis because strokes often present with facial droop as well. |
| 1:17.4 | Stroke is a huge deal. Bell's palsy, not a huge deal, but delineating stroke versus Bell's palsy versus other things that cause |
| 1:24.5 | facial paralysis requires a very astute clinician and a solid physical exam. |
| 1:29.9 | So let's do this, let's talk about it. |
| 1:31.8 | So what is Bell's palsy? Bell's palsy is the dysfunction of cranial nerve 7, the facial |
| 1:37.2 | nerve. It affects 11 to 40 patients per 100,000. Most commonly, they're between the ages of 15 and 45, |
| 1:45.0 | and the only real risk factor |
| 1:48.0 | or the only really shown and proven thing |
| 1:50.0 | to increase the chances of getting Bell's Pause is being pregnant. |
| 1:53.6 | You're three times more likely to get Bell's Pausey if you're pregnant, |
| 1:57.2 | particularly if you're in the third trimester or shortly after delivery, like the |
| 2:01.3 | first week or two after delivery. |
... |
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