INTRODUCTION
Patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) are essential for the
evaluation of facial palsy. The most commonly used PROM for facial palsy
is the Facial Clinimetric Evaluation (FaCE) scale, which consists of 15
questions with a 5-point Likert scale.1,2 It consists
of six subscales – facial movement, facial comfort, oral function, eye
comfort, lacrimal control, and social function – which sum up to a
total score representing ‘overall’ facial palsy-related quality of life.
The current importance of each subscale in calculating the total score
is determined by the number of questions composing each subscale. It has
not been analyzed whether FaCE subscales’ weight in the total score
reflects subscales’ importance to overall facial palsy-specific quality
of life. In this study, we aim to calculate the contribution of the FaCE
subscales to overall quality of life.
METHODS
Institutional review board approval was acquired before the start of
this study. Facial palsy patients older than 18 years and fluent in
Dutch visiting the outpatient clinic of a tertiary plastic surgery
center were invited for participation between June and August 2020.
Patients were asked to complete the validated Dutch FaCE questionnaire
and to score overall facial palsy-related burden on a Visual Analogue
Scale (VAS). As the FaCE scale addresses impairments experienced in the
past week, the VAS was also used to score the burden experienced during
the previous week.
The reliability and validity of the VAS were tested in a separate group
of patients visiting the same outpatient clinic. On two occasions (T1
and T2), 1 week apart, patients were asked to complete both the FaCE
scale and the VAS.