Migraine Surgery Provides Significant Pain Relief, Improves Functioning

Migraine surgery is associated with significant improvements in functional status, coping ability, pain, and migraine frequency among recipients of the surgery, according to a recent study.

Candidates for migraine surgery have chronic pain with significant disability. Using the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ), the researchers assessed the pain coping abilities and function of 90 migraine surgery candidates.
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In addition to the PSEQ, patients also completed the Migraine Headache Index prior to surgery and at 12 months post-surgery. Paired t-tests and Pearson correlation were used to assess patients’ scores. Scores were compared via select representative PSEQ scores for other pain conditions.

Results showed that, following surgery, all scores had significantly improved from baseline by 112%. The mean preoperative PSEQ score was 18.2 ± 11.7, which was extremely poor compared with scores reported for other pain condition. They also observed that improvement in PSEQ score following surgery had been higher compared with other pain conditions after treatment.

Pre-surgery PSEQ scores had no effect on postoperative outcomes, the researchers noted.

“The PSEQ successfully demonstrates the extent of debility in migraine surgery patients by putting migraine pain in perspective with other known pain conditions,” the researchers concluded. “It further evaluates functional status, rather than improvement in migraine characteristics, which significantly adds to our understanding of outcome. Poor preoperative PSEQ scores do not influence outcome and should not be used to determine eligibility for migraine surgery.”

—Christina Vogt

Reference:

Gfrerer L, Lans J, Faulkner HR, Nota S, Bot AGJ, Austen WG. Ability to cope with pain puts migraine surgery patients in perspective. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2018;141(1):169-174. doi:10.1097/PRS.0000000000003955.