Sinus infection and facial numbness

Jump to content. Top of the page Check Your Symptoms. Facial problems can be caused by a minor problem or a serious condition. Symptoms may include pain, swelling, or facial weakness or numbness. You may feel these symptoms in your teeth, jaw, tongue, ear, sinuses, eyes, salivary glands, blood vessels, or nerves. Common causes of facial problems include infection, conditions that affect the skin of the face, and other diseases.

Acute sinusitis causes the spaces inside your nose sinuses to become inflamed and swollen. This interferes with drainage and causes mucus to build up. With acute sinusitis, it might be difficult to breathe through your nose. The area around your eyes and face might feel swollen, and you might have throbbing facial pain or a headache. Acute sinusitis is mostly caused by the common cold.

Numbness refers to the loss of sensation in any part of your body. Most causes of facial numbness are related to compression of your nerves or nerve damage. There are some symptoms related to facial numbness that warrant an immediate trip to the doctor.

When approaching a patient with cranial nerve 7 CN7 palsy, a careful workup must be undertaken in order to rule out the many treatable etiologies, including the malignant and infectious. To guide the need for imaging, a careful medical history must elicit if the CN7 weakness had an abrupt onset or a progressive course. Bell palsy is diagnosed only if potential etiologies of the CN7 lesion have been confidently ruled out. A man in his 50s presented to a tertiary care emergency department ED with a 5-week history of right facial paresis, facial numbness, and severe ipsilateral headaches. He had presented to an outside ED shortly after the onset of his facial weakness and headaches 5 weeks prior and was diagnosed as having Bell palsy.