Botox Treatment for Migraines

Most peo­ple think of Botox as a treat­ment to fight the appear­ance of facial wrin­kles. How­ev­er, you may be sur­prised to know that Botox actu­al­ly has med­ical uses for oth­er health con­di­tions, includ­ing migraines.

Quin­cy Med­ical Group’s (QMG) Neu­rol­o­gy Depart­ment offers Botox as a treat­ment option for chron­ic migraines. Chron­ic migraine suf­fer­ers often face debil­i­tat­ing symp­toms impact­ing their qual­i­ty of life.

QMG Neu­rol­o­gist Dr. Daniel Kim­ple says chron­ic migraines are defined as hav­ing 15 or more headache days per month. Eight or more of these days need to be migraine-asso­ci­at­ed headache days, and headaches gen­er­al­ly need to last 4 or more hours to count towards a headache day.

“Migraine headaches are often in the frontal head region or uni­lat­er­al and tend to have a throb­bing or pul­satile qual­i­ty. Accom­pa­ny­ing symp­toms may include nau­sea, vom­it­ing, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to light and sound dur­ing the attacks,” explains Dr. Kimple.

If a patient has these symp­toms, Dr. Kim­ple says the first step should be to dis­cuss their con­di­tion with their pri­ma­ry care provider. Before a patient can be con­sid­ered a can­di­date for Botox treat­ment, he explains there has to be doc­u­men­ta­tion that the patient has been unable to tol­er­ate or achieve ade­quate relief from oth­er headache medications.

“There may be ini­tial pre­ven­tion treat­ments before con­sid­er­a­tion of Botox such as opti­miz­ing acute med­ica­tions, pre­vent­ing med­ica­tion overuse headaches, address­ing comor­bid con­di­tions, and adjust­ing lifestyle prac­tices,” he explains. ​“The pri­ma­ry provider then may choose to refer for eval­u­a­tion for Botox with a neurologist.”

Once referred to neu­rol­o­gy, a mem­ber of QMG’s Neu­rol­o­gy Team will per­form an exten­sive eval­u­a­tion to deter­mine if Botox is the best treat­ment option.

“Gen­er­al­ly, the patient will be eval­u­at­ed by a neu­rol­o­gist and if they meet the nec­es­sary require­ments would like­ly receive injec­tions typ­i­cal­ly for a tri­al peri­od. Botox has the advan­tage of being a local agent to the tar­get­ed region and may avoid poten­tial side effects that oral med­ica­tions may have.”

Botox has also been effec­tive in the treat­ment of oth­er con­di­tions includ­ing cer­vi­cal dys­to­nia, post-stroke spas­tic­i­ty, ble­pharospasm, and torticollis.

For more infor­ma­tion on this treat­ment, con­tact Quin­cy Med­ical Group Neu­rol­o­gy Depart­ment at 217−222−6550, ext. 3434 or vis­it quin​cymegroup​.com.