Plastic Surgery for Migraines???

About 30 million people in the USA suffer from migraines, and some cannot get adequate relief from medications. For them, a new approach may be attractive. A study reported in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery describes this.

Cleveland, Ohio, surgeons enrolled 75 patients with moderate to severe migraines. They were assigned, in a proportion of 2:1, to have a forehead-lift cosmetic-type procedure, or a sham operation.  There were 49 patients in the actual surgery group, and 26 in the sham-surgery group. The actual site of surgery was determined by the predominant trigger site for the individual patient’s migraines. Various scoring systems were used to identify the intensity of migraine attacks before and one year after surgery.

Compared with the sham-surgery or control group, the forehead-lift group had statistically significant improvements in migraine measurements after one year; these improvements were not related to trigger site. 84% of the actual surgery patients, compared with 58% of the sham-surgery patients, experienced a 50% reduction in migraine headaches. More importantly, 57.7% of the actual surgery vs. 3.8% of the sham-surgery patients had no migraine headaches following their surgery. The most common complaint after surgery was slight hollowing of the temple are in those subjects who had temporal migraine headaches.

These results seem impressive, although there was some criticism of the method from some neurologists.  Is this too good to be true? Well, female patients will have the benefit, at least, of a cosmetic improvement, even if their migraines aren’t stopped. This is something that will certainly be a discussion point around the water coolers.