Materials and Methods: This observational study was conducted, including 34 eyes of 17 patients with unilateral facial nerve palsy. Several parameters were compared between the affected (paralytic) eyes and the unaffected (fellow) eyes, including non-invasive tear break-up time (NI-TBUT), corneal fluorescein staining, meibomian gland dropout (MGDo), and meibography score (MS). Spearman correlation analysis was performed to determine any associations between the gold weight parameters and meibomian gland dysfunction.

Results: The paralytic eyes exhibited significantly lower NI-TBUT values (p=0.001) and higher corneal fluorescein staining (p<0.001) compared to the fellow eyes. Furthermore, both the upper and lower eyelids of the paralytic side showed higher MGDo and MS values (each p-value <0.001). There were no significant differences in MGDo and MS between the lower and upper lids on both sides (each p>0.05). Moreover, no significant correlation was found between meibomian gland dysfunction and the weight of the gold implant or the duration of implantation (p>0.05).

Conclusions: While meibomian gland dysfunction is commonly observed in eyes with paralytic lagophthalmos, the findings of this study suggest that eyelid weight implantation has no significant impact on meibomian gland function. Keywords : Facial paralysis, gold weight implantation, lagophthalmos, meibomian gland, non-invasive tear break-up time (NI-TBUT)