Migraine? Perhaps it’s time for a nip and tuck
Some routine procedures have surprising benefits
PATIENTS due to have surgery are routinely warned about the risks – but they may not realise there are surprising added benefits from common procedures.
For instance, scientists have recently discovered that women who have their appendix removed are more likely to become pregnant.
Researchers tracked more than 400 000 women of child-bearing age over 15 years and found for every 100 pregnancies in women who still had their appendix, there were 134 in those who had them removed earlier in life.
The most likely explanation is that repeated low-level infections in the appendix trigger raised levels of inflammation throughout the body, including the womb, making it harder for embryos to implant, explains consultant surgeon Sami Shimi, who took part in the study.
Here we look at some of the other common surgical procedures that bring unexpected benefits:
A cataract operation on a damaged lens won’t just improve vision, it can also improve sleep patterns.
Cataracts happen when the lens of the eye starts to become opaque.
Normally, light enters the eye through the cornea at the front and passes through the lens and onto the light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye.
As we age, the lens loses some transparency so less light reaches the retina, making vision cloudy or blurry.
But this also disrupts the body’s internal clock which regulates sleep/wake patterns controlled by sunlight hitting the retina. Light affects the release of melatonin, a hormone released in the brain to get the body ready for sleep.
During the day, its production is usually suppressed by exposure to sunlight. As darkness falls, levels rise.
Cataracts mean not enough light gets through the lens to alert the brain of this change from daylight to dusk. So there isn’t the increase in melatonin levels needed to make someone sleepy.
When ophthalmologists at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, replaced 961 patients’ degraded lenses with man-made implants they found it had a dramatic effect.
Half of the patients complained of poor sleep before the procedure, but one month later were getting to sleep quicker and for longer according to the results published in 2014 in the journal Visual Neuroscience.
As well as reducing weight, gastric surgery has been found to help cure type 2 diabetes and reduce the risk of heart disease. But now research suggests patients might also find they remember things better.
A review of 18 studies by doctors at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, found the sudden and drastic weight loss triggered substantial improvements in memory, attention span and cognitive control (the ability to make decisions and change plans quickly according to circumstances).
Researchers said the most likely explanation was that the surgery reduced blood pressure as a result of their being a lot slimmer.
High blood pressure can damage tiny blood vessels in the head, reducing the flow of oxygen-rich blood to cells in the brain.
Cosmetic surgery for droopy eyelids may banish migraines, too, says a study in the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Nearly 9 000 people a year in the UK have the procedure, called blepharoplasty.
Researchers from Louisiana State University tracked 30 women and five men who had the surgery for cosmetic reasons but who also regularly had migraines – 90 percent said their migraine attacks halved in frequency and a year after the surgery, 51 percent had none at all.
The surgery to lift the skin involved cutting nerves in the eyelid which can trigger migraines (the supraorbital and supratochlear nerves spark pain when they become compressed by surrounding muscle or bone).
It sounds an unlikely solution, but surgery to remove tonsils is occasionally recommended to help with the skin condition psoriasis.
That’s because recurrent tonsillitis is caused by the bacteria Streptococcus A. This has a protein on its outer membrane which resembles a protein also found in skin cells.
When the immune system sends infection-fighting cells to attack the invading throat bacteria, they can also attack healthy skin cells by mistake, triggering psoriasis or a flare-up of it.
Yet not everybody who gets a sore throat gets psoriasis. Experts think those who do have genes more likely to produce the proteins involved.
An estimated 80 percent of those with guttate psoriasis – a form that leads to tear-shaped red patches on the abdomen, back, arms and legs – have suffered a Strep A throat infection in the two or three weeks before their skin erupted.
If they are then prone to repeat throat infections, their psoriasis can get worse.
A 2012 study in the Journal of Immunology found that when 20 psoriasis sufferers who suffered frequent sore throats had their tonsils out, there was a 50 percent decline in the area of skin affected by the red blotches. – Daily Mail