Facial paralysis impacts over 4,000,000 people worldwide each year, due to Bell’s palsy, brain surgery, stroke, Parkinson’s and other diseases. Eye closure is generally regarded as the top functional priority restoration in patients experiencing facial paralysis. The absence of blinking can lead to extremely painful corneal ulceration and severe dry eye, either can cause visual impairment or irreversible visual loss.
Blinking is a mechanism that protects the eye and spreads tears over the cornea. The normal human eye blinks every 2-10 seconds, but with facial paralysis the ability to blink is usually impaired or absent. As a direct result, many patients suffer from dry eye, headaches, extreme light sensitivity, and image quality degradation. Currently, there is no solution that restores blinking. All treatment options are inadequate since they intend to alleviate the symptoms but not to restore blinking.
NeuroTrigger has developed NTB device that was recently cleared by the FDA through a 510 (k) pathway indicated for the prevention or retardation of disuse atrophy and muscle re-education to maintain or increase range of motion.
After successful finalization of a usability study of our device on facial paralysis patients recently in Ichilov, we aim to initiate a multi-center, multinational clinical trial with our device to restore blinking of facial paralysis patients prior to market penetration.