Great clinical question. Since you have taken the foundation course at this point, you are needling the correct neuroTrP. To add to what you're doing, you may also include the hyoid muscular needling learned in the 1st level course since you do get into the facial nerve innervation zone (innervation to posterior digastric). The advanced course (2nd level) provides needling techniques that include the extracranial points of the facial nerve (where it exits the stylomastoid forament) and the 5 branches (temporal, zygomatic, buccal, marginal mandibular, and cervical).

I have two cases of Bell's Palsy that I was able to successfully treat. I did all the points that you did and then after DN, I massaged the area and performed a lot of assisted eye closing and facial muscle exercises (first passive then active-assisted, then resisted). Perhaps you are doing all that too and just specifically asking what points to activate but I wanted to share what I did. It looks David is suggesting some more advanced points which I did not do but I'm sure they would be helpful. Good luck!

Thank you Catherine. I've had him do the facial exercises on his own and we definitely hit the massage on all areas. But, maybe I can do more of the active assisted and resisted activities! 🙂

I have done dry needling for Bell's palsy on only a couple of patient's but I've found that using e-stim is helpful. There is another therapist in my company who says she gets good results with 30 minutes of stim 2x a week. I personally find it difficult to justify in terms of billing though.