Facial nerve paralysis makes much discomfort in cosmetics. functions and psychology, so the degrees and sites of injury must be estimated and treated early as possible. Surgical methods are facial nerve decompression, end to end anastomosis, interpositional nerve, graft, nerve crossover and so on, and recently there has been increased acceptance of techniques for the exploration of the entire intratemporal facial nerve from the internal auditory canal to the stylomastoid foramen. Anthors analyzed 17 cases who were treated with decompression of the facial nerve(transmastoid approach ; 14, middle cranial fossa approach ; 3) from April 1985 to July 1990 and the postoperative recovery of facial function was better in cases which were decompressed in yonger age group(91.7%), trauma(81.8%) and early operation(68.8%).