Botox for Post-Traumatic Migraines: Effective Treatment After Car Accident Brain Injury
If you’ve suffered a brain injury in a motor vehicle collision, or other incident and are experiencing chronic headaches, you’re not alone. Post-traumatic headaches affect up to 85% of patients with brain injuries, with many experiencing more than 15 headache days per month. Migraine headache is the most common type of post-traumatic headache. While many people associate Botox with cosmetic treatments, it’s actually Health Canada-approved as an effective second-line treatment for chronic migraines—including those that develop after brain injuries from personal injury accidents.
We recently spoke with Dr. Chantal Vaidyanath, Physician Lead of the Head Injury Clinic at St. Michael’s Hospital, about this promising treatment option. Dr. Vaidyanath specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic migraines and given her extensive experience with Botox injections for spasticity management, she is now offering Botox injections for migraine management. The insights shared in this article are based on our conversation with her about how this treatment can help brain injury patients reclaim their quality of life.