KEY POINTS:
A new surgical procedure is curing chronic migraine sufferers of their headaches, and giving them a younger looking face at the same time.
The surgery, developed by renowned American plastic surgeon Bahman Guyuron, could become the staple cure for hundreds of New Zealand migraine sufferers, he told the
Weekend Herald.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Australasian Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons conference in Arrowtown this week, Dr Guyuron said he stumbled upon the cure in "a moment of serendipity".
A surgeon's wife had a forehead lift, which included the removal of the "frown muscle" - the corrugator supercilii muscle - just above the inner corner of each eye.
Interestingly the woman, a chronic sufferer of migraines, noticed she had no more migraines after the operation. Another patient reported the same result, Dr Guyuron saw a pattern, and a study ensued.
A total of seven studies, and more than 400 patients, have since followed, he said.
Of those patients, 90 to 92 per cent have reported significant reduction or total elimination of their migraines since the operation, he said.
The trick was in surgically removing the cause of nerve irritations, he said. Certain nerves in the head, when irritated, brought on the migraines in some people.
Those nerves were irritated when the muscles around them contracted too much. For treating two of the four migraine trigger sites, above the eyes and at the back of the neck, Dr Guyuron either partially or completely removed the muscles.
The removal of those muscles did not present people with unwanted side-effects, he said.
To discover which trigger site affected which patient, and to trial whether surgery would help them, they first had botox injected into the suspected trigger site.
The botox paralysed the muscle, making it unable to contract on the nerves.
Botox injections were already a common form of treatment for severe migraine sufferers, he said, and the surgery simply took that knowledge to the next step.
For the trigger site on the temples he removed a segment of the offending nerve. The fourth trigger site, a crooked septim in the nose, was straightened.
And through the surgery people were left looking younger, he said, through the removal of their vertical frown lines and the improved positioning of their eyebrows.
"So we're killing two birds with one shot."
Dr Guyuron said he had the support of many in the neurologist community in America, and he expected the same support here once people understood what it was he was doing, the research behind it, and the results of the patients already treated.
New Zealand Neurological Foundation medical adviser Dr Jon Simcock said the surgery, in theory, seemed reasonable.
Such a treatment would need extensive evidence behind it, while botox treatment already went a long way to weaken the corrugator supercilii muscle, he said.
Dr Simcock said he thought that fewer than 100 New Zealanders a year would be treated with botox for migraines.