Isolated, unilateral, reversible palsy of the hypoglossal nerve

We report three patients with isolated unilateral hypoglossal nerve palsy w ho experienced an excellent outcome. In two patients no cause was found. Our study seems to confirm that the occurrence of benign and idiopathic iso lated unilateral palsy of the hypoglossal nerve is more frequent than previ ously reported. We would like to stress that neuroimaging studies remain ma ndatory in order to exclude other common causes, such as tumour and spontan eous or traumatic vascular lesions, in which a specific treatment is necess ary.