Assessment of functional recovery after facial nerve repair.

<p><b>A.</b> Representative whisker movement amplitude plot of a repaired whisker immediately after surgery (red line) and the contralateral healthy whisker (blue line) obtained over a 6-second period of continuous whisking using automated whisker tracking technology. The repaired whisker shows only small fibrillations indicating complete denervation. <b>B.</b> Representative whisker movement amplitude plot of a repaired whisker 6 weeks after surgery (red line) and the contralateral healthy whisker (blue line) obtained over a 6-second period. The repaired whisker shows recovery of movement. <b>C</b>. Relative postoperative whisker movement amplitude, i.e. repaired side movement in % of healthy side movement. <b>D.</b> Cumulative functional improvement (area under curve—AUC) calculation showing there was faster functional recovery improvement in the FL (solid line) group compared to WL (stippled line). Student’s one- sided t test p value provided at the final time point.