Can a hysterectomy help or make migraines worse?

Thanks so much for your question! It is certainly a great one. As you know everyone responds vastly differently to treatments, procedures, etc., so it is important to always keep that in mind. That being said, I wanted to share this article with you as one of our contributor's shares her experience and many from the community also provided some feedback as well. You can read Elizabeth's article here. Additionally, do you follow us on Facebook as well? If so, we shared the same article there & there were many comments there as well. You can find that post here. Good luck & keep us posted!

Hi Migraine Cindy,

Thank you for your question, it's an important one.

In addition to Joanna's information, we do have some numbers on migraine and hysterectomy I can share with you.

There doesn't seem to be a concrete way to see which women will see a reduction in migraine attack frequency and who won't. I can tell you some women find their migraine attacks get better after natural menopause and some get worse. Studies show when women go through natural menopause 67% find that their migraine attacks get better, 9% of women find they get worse, and 24% find their migraine attacks don't change at all.
On the other hand when women have surgical menopause almost the opposite is true; 33% of women find their migraine attacks get better, 67% find their migraine attacks get worse and there is an insignificant (study wise) number of women whose migraines don't change at all.
Migraine experts recommend that women considering a hysterectomy do not proceed if they're considering it only because of migraine disease.

I hope this helps!
Nancy