Guillain-Barré Syndrome Presenting with Facial Diplegia Due to SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Case Series and Current Literature Review

Abstract

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) infection was first detected at the end of December 2019. Encephalitis, ischemic stroke, ataxia, and peripheral nerve diseases were reported in patients after the COVID-19 infection. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and cranial nerve involvement are also frequently observed. We report five patients with GBS after the COVID-19 infection. Four of them had facial diplegia. Electromyography of the three patients mentioned having acute motor and sensory axonal neuropathy, whereas two had demyelinating and mixed types. Mixed types were more frequent in studies, and a significant relationship was found with the demyelinating type. The high rate of facial diplegia in our cases suggests that more research should be conducted on the cranial nerve involvement in GBS patients with COVID-19 infection. Our aim was to focus on cranial nerve involvement in COVID-19 patients.

Keywords

• guillain-barré syndrome
• facial diplegia
• sars-cov-2