[Pathogenesis of secondary contractures of the mimetic muscles]

The results of a clinical and experimental study of the pathogenesis of secondary contractures of mimical muscles are presented. By means of clinico-electrophysiological studies 115 patients with postneuritic contractures are studied. A clinico-statistical analysis of 723 patients with facial nerve neuritis was conducted. For the first time it was possible to model the disease in 112 rabbits with an eventual complex study of the morphological basis and pathophysiological mechanisms of experimental contractures on all stages of its formation. As a result, some ways of accomplishing pathological reflectory influences on the affected nervous-muscular apparatus are defined on the part of the segmentary and suprasegementary structures of the brain stem. It was demonstrated that the direct reason of a disturbed functional state of these structures was an afferent desintegration, due to a crude lesion of the facial nerve and subsequently, it wrong regeneration with a change of the usual scheme of nervous-muscular relations. On the basis of obtained results a pathogenetic therapy of secondary contractures of mimical muscles with Tegretol was proposed and tried clinically.