Dental Health Check with Dr. Linda Niessen
Dental health topics from Dr. Linda Niessen of Baylor College of Dentistry
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 Botox and Facial Pain

By Dr. Linda Niessen
Monday, May 02, 2005

STORY:  BOTOX AND FACIAL PAIN

Botox injections temporarily paralyze   muscles. Doctors now are treating patients with the medication who suffer from face or jaw pain caused by muscle contractions. Dr. Linda Niessen has details in this segment of Dental Health Check.

Kelly Saffell suffers from a debilitating condition that causes spasms in her eyelids, jaws, and throat.

"I thought I was tired. My eyelids would just close. And then it became more of a sustained squeezing and horrible, horrendous headaches," said Kelly.

Kelly has dystonia, a mysterious disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions.

Her treatment? Botox injections every two months in her eyelids, jaws, and neck.

"My eyes are able to stay open better," said Kelly. "There's less squeezing. I get fewer headaches, less clinching in the jaw, less throat spasms."

Dr. Richard Riggs, a dentist who treats patients with oral and facial pain, cautions patients to ask many questions before undergoing botox injections, said, "We want to limit botox to those problems that are outside the joint, muscles, as opposed to inside the joint."

"Don't make it your only therapy and don't make it your first therapy," he added.

Botox injections reduce headache pain caused by face and neck muscle contractions.

Karen Hardwick suffers from headaches caused by the side effects of T-M-J or jaw       surgery.

"I would definitely recommend the botox injections in the back of the head because I suffered for so many years. The headaches have cut down from four a month to once every nine or ten months. That's an incredible improvement," said Karen.

Botox is a new option to treat muscle disorders in the jaw. But it should not be used to treat pain related nerve disorders. For Baylor College of Dentistry, Texas A&M Health Science Center, I'm Dr. Linda Niessen, Channel 8 News.

Dr. Linda Niessen, clinical professor in the Department of Restorative Sciences and  the Office of Communications and Development at Baylor College of Dentistry, hosts Dental Health Check, the only weekly dental feature shot on location in the nation.

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