Plastic Surgery For Migraines?
Buyman Guyuron, MD, a professor of plastic surgery with Case Western Reserve University and for the American Migraine Center, has concluded the first study of using plastic surgery as a new migriane treatment. His results have been published in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
What Up?
Sometimes in the messy world of medical science, you can find something that you had no intention of looking for. This is what apparantly has happened to plastic surgeons. Guyuron says that patients who underwent facial surgery often reported a relief in migraines and headaches. He was able to determine two plastic surgery for migraines. They both involve needles, Botox, needles, forehead muscle incisions and needles in your head.
First, you get back or facial injections of Botox to help the surgeon determine which facial muscles get the snip. The Botox will trigger a migraine. Thanks, Doc! And I have to pay for it, too. Thank you, sir; can I have another? Then those muscles are snipped.
All together now: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME.
All Kidding Aside
Granted, I’m skeptical, but the findings in this study are hard to sneer at. And the study was smart enough to check up on the patients on year after surgery. 92% of surgery patients had a drop of migraine intensity and frequency by 50%. They also had to call out of work an average of 73% less than a control group of migraineurs.
Considering the cost of medications, doctor visits and lost time at work, it is thought that plastic surgery of the forehad is the cheaper option in the long run.
Before you go booking an appointment at your nearest anti-aging clinic, keep in mind that even Dr. Guyuron is NOT labeling plastic surgery for migraines a “cure”. Only about 100 people had the procedure and 25 didn’t (they were the control group). That’s not enough of population sample to approve a surgical procedure.
However, this study certainly paves the way for more studies and does off a glimmer of hope for those with migraines and, apparantly, those suffering from chronic tension headaches.
January 31st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
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Oliver Wendell Holmes gave us - “Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”