PATIENTS suffering from facial paralysis want to know whether their disfigurement will grow worse or better, whether it will improve only partly, or recover completely. This is a very legitimate request and the doctor must know how to answer this question as well as he possibly can. In some cases the answer is not so very difficult. The clinical picture and the case history may give him all the information he needs. If a facial palsy complicates a chronic otitis, the prognosis is never completely favorable, and the only way to improve the chance of recovery is an immediate operation with careful removal of all diseased bone or cholesteatoma up to the region of the facial nerve. A combination of herpetic eruptions, eight nerve affection, and facial paralysis has generally a good prognosis as regards facial function, and a complete paralysis or an aggravating paresis immediately following a surgical trauma