Pennsylvania Nurse, Front Page 2017 Issue 3 | Page 10

passages of the temporal bone.
It carries nerve impulses to the
anterior tongue, facial muscles,
salivary glands, and lacrimal
glands through the facial canal,
also called the fallopian tube
(Baugh et al., 2013). It has been
posited that when the facial nerve
is affected by direct trauma or
infection, including a reactivation
of a viral condition like HSV-1 in
the geniculate ganglia, the nerve
becomes infl amed and becomes
impinged within the small open-
ing of the facial canal (McCance
& Huether, 2014). This impinge-
ment on the nerve prevents it
from communicating with fa-
cial muscles. The infl ammation
destroys or injures the cell bodies
of the facial nerve, which changes
the neurons due to demyelin-
ation resulting in facial paralys