Facial nerve schwannomas (FNSs) are rare benign tumors that can involve any segment of the facial nerve. Comprehensive understanding of these tumors remains limited, largely due to the paucity of reports on large surgical series in the literature, and their clinical management is particularly challenging....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
This case series offers useful benchmarking data on surgical approaches and outcomes across facial nerve segments, but as a single-institution retrospective series it is not practice-changing on its own; surgeons managing these rare tumors should review it for comparative context.
Facial nerve schwannomas are rare and surgically challenging; a contemporary series of 67 cases adds meaningful outcome data to a thin evidence base and can help guide surgical decision-making.
- 0167 surgeries for facial nerve schwannomas reviewed — one of the larger contemporary single series.
- 02Coverage spans all segments of the facial nerve, providing broad anatomical scope.
- 03Published in Journal of Neurosurgery, a high-impact peer-reviewed surgical journal.
- 04Case-series design limits causal inference but reflects real-world surgical practice.
- 05Findings are relevant to neurotologists and skull-base surgeons managing these rare tumors.
The series represents a contemporary review of surgical management across all facial nerve segments.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42566790
- DOI
- 10.3171/2026.3.JNS252831.
- Journal
- Journal of Neurosurgery
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Sample size
- 67
- Population
- Patients undergoing surgery for facial nerve schwannomas across all facial nerve segments
- Intervention
- Surgical management of facial nerve schwannomas
Primary outcomes
Surgical outcomes across facial nerve segments; Facial nerve function post-operatively