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To the Editor.—The paper by Robinson (Bell's Palsy: A Predisposition of Pregnant Women) addresses itself to the issue of whether the disease is more likely to occur in a pregnant woman than in another member of the population at large. Although the author admits that there is some disagreement in the literature on the subject and he cites literature which shows the contrary, he concludes that pregnancy predisposes toward Bell's palsy. It might thus be useful to point up some limitations in the supporting data presented.
In order to conclude that Bell's palsy more commonly begins in pregnancy, it would be necessary to show that its occurrence in the group of pregnant women was higher than could be expected by chance alone. The Chi-square test is often used as a measure of such association. In this procedure, we can specify four sets relating pregnancy and Bell's palsy (namely, pregnant