Dr. Silvio Podda, Caniofacial Surgoen at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in New Jersey talks more about the procedure in this question and answer session.
How many people do you deal with when it comes to migraines? It seems
like it is a huge problem.
Silvio Podda: It is a huge problem because the numbers are actually quite
scary and I didn’t know about it before. There are like twenty eight or thirty
million episodes of migraine every year. I think the calculation has been made at
fourteen billion dollars are lost every year because people lose jobs. I don’t see
that many right now because particularly in this area of the United States, in the
northeast there are not that many guys that do it surgically. And the surgery of
the migraine was a total coincident found.
Meaning that there was a surgeon in Cleveland that was doing a lot of forehead rejuvenation, you know the brow lift
surgery. And then he reviewed his old numbers and he realized that out of three
migraines and they had complained of migraines. And out of those forty patients
all of them that had done the procedure they never had any other episodes of
migraines. So he started studying the problem. So you send the patient to a
neurologist and the neurologist does the diagnosis. Once the diagnosis is made
you have to follow a precise protocol. So you use Botox injection which I’m
sure everybody is familiar. So you do the Botox injection to the muscle of the
forehead, the muscle that gives you this kind of frowns, and every month you
do the Botox injection. If the patient gets better you do it one month, the second
month, the third month and if he passes four different trials that shows that the
patient is a candidate for that type of surgery.
This is for people that start on Botox and they don’t want to take Botox the
rest of their life?
Silvio Podda: They don’t want to take it, they stop. Because what happens with
the Botox for that month after you actually have no migraine or much smaller
migraine but then once you stop Botox the migraine comes back. And in general
these operations are then for people that have chronic migraines and they suffer
very, very often. So what you do after the patient has passed the protocol you
need also to be evaluated by an ENT because sometimes it’s secondary to
turbinate, to nose congestion or deviated septum.
So once you’re sure that that’s the reason for the migraine then you can do the surgical release of the migraine
which is actually a very simple surgery. You can do it again noninvasively with a
camera so we do two small incisions covered by the hairline the same way we
do the forehead lift. And then through the camera you go and then you remove
the muscle that gives you the frown expression. Which are the muscles of the
glabella, which is this area. Or you can do it doing a blepharoplasty which is
an upper eyelid surgery. So you go underneath the eyebrow so you don’t see
anything, you remove the muscles and that’s it. I’ve done a patient a year ago
and Susan suffered horrific migraines. She’s the one actually that wrote me
a letter, I mean I’ll do anything to let other people know because my life has
completely changed. Because she has not had a single episode of migraines
since then. And I mean I have never had migraines so I have no idea but when I
see patients that have it’s a pretty debilitating injury and problem.
Are there any risks to this surgery?
Silvio Podda: Not really.
Other than infections?
Silvio Podda? Whenever you do a surgery that actually a lot of people do
because medically you may imagine that the risks are basically a little bit of
asymmetry of the eyebrow, you can damage one of the branches of the frontal
nerve, you can have a little bit of asymmetry here from the forehead. But
particularly in cases of patients that have migraines it seems a lot of patients
accept those risks just to do it cosmetically that are actually very limited. And the
more surgeries you do the better you get at it.
This information is intended for additional research purposes only. It is not to be used as
a prescription or advice from Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc. or any medical professional
interviewed. Ivanhoe Broadcast News, Inc. assumes no responsibility for the depth or
accuracy of physician statements. Procedures or medicines apply to different people and
medical factors; always consult your physician on medical matters.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Nancy Collins
Director, Public Relations/Marketing
St. Joseph's Healthcare System
(973)754-4500
collinsn@sjhmc.org
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKRCG