Facial, especially mouth and lips, expression of human is a tool to read his emotions. It is controlled by marginal mandibular branch of facial nerve. This nerve often gets injured during surgery by the surgeon’s due to disease complications. An injury in marginal mandibular nerve (MMN) during the surgery can distort the facial expression. Thus, present study aimed to explore the anatomical variation of MMN and injury following surgery in patients with neck cancer. This study was included 51 patients with neck cancer and was operated by our expert surgeon’s team. Out of these, 48 patients (94.11%) had one branch and 3 patients (5.9 %) had two branch of MMN. The distance below mandible was less than 5mm in 48 subjects (94.11%), while in 3 patients (5.9 %), it was between 5-10 mm. In 21, 3, 16, 8, 2 and 1 patients loop angle were 110o, 120o, 130o, 140o, 150o and 160o observed, respectively. In 9 patients (17.65%), MMN facial nerves were sacrificed due to malignancy reason. In our present study, injury of MMN facial nerve due to malignancy and results of surgical approaches for healthy nerve with zero percent injury were documented.
Keywords: Marginal Mandibular Nerve, Neck dissection, Neck cancer
