If you've never had a migraine — believe me, you know it when you have one — you really cannot understand the disabling pain these super-headaches unleash. By some estimates, as many at 30 million in the United States have migraines on a regular basis.
Fortunately, plastic surgeons have happened upon a happy side-effect of injecting botulinum toxin into the faces of people who want to reduce wrinkles caused by overused facial muscles. New research published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery shows that the toxin can reduce the incidence of treatment-resistant migraines. The findings were reported in an article on the website of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
"Nearly one out of four households, including 18 percent of women, suffer from migraines and many patients are not only eager, but desperate to stop the pain," said study author Bahman Guyuron, M.D., who is professor and chairman department of plastic surgery at the University Hospitals Case Medical Center, in Cleveland. "In this study, we've shown that surgical treatment of migraine headaches is safe, effective, and that this reasonably short operation can have a colossal impact on the patients' quality of life — all while eliminating signs of aging for some patients, too."
According to the article, for more than a decade researchers have been testing the idea that "migraines are caused when a person's trigeminal nerve branches are irritated." Cosmetic surgeons noticed that when the muscles around these nerves are made to stop working by injection of neutralized botulinum toxin, which goes by the trade name Botox, among others, patients reported having fewer migraines.
The deadening effects of injected botulinum fade after several months. But the same result can become permanent when a surgeon cuts these tiny, facial nerves. That's exactly what Dr. Guyuron did. Some of his 75 subjects got surgery and some got "sham" surgery, which means they were led to think they had the surgery, but didn't.
Here's what's amazing about this work. A year later, a whopping "57 percent of the patients in the actual surgery group reported complete elimination of migraine headaches, compared with only 4 percent in the sham surgery group." The study also notes that a sizable percentage of the patients that received sham surgery reported reduction in migraines. Go figure.
"And I can say that these procedures are the most rewarding for me, because these are the patients that come back and report that their lives have been changed," Dr. Guyuron stated in the article.
Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com via creativecommons.org.
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