JOIN USThe procedure, which involves a surgery similar to the one used to reduce wrinkles, could be the most effective treatment for migraine, but only if it is caused by the corrugator muscle pressing on the nerve, the researchers said.
Corrugator muscle is one which lies just above the eyelid. Migraines are often caused by this muscle contracting and putting pressure on the surrounding trigeminal nerve.
Penny Radcliffe, 57, is first woman in Britain to have cured of her severe migraine by the brow-life procedure.
Doctors who carried out her surgery at a private hospital in Eastbourne, removed part of the 'frown' corrugator muscle.
Cosmetic surgeon John Pereira said they made five small incisions in Radcliffe's hairline above her forehead, then drilled down to the bone and cut away the parts of the muscle which were closest to the nerve and likely to be triggering her migraine.
"The muscle is similar to an elastic band. We cut a small section around the nerve to reduce the pressure," Pereira was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
He later lifted her eyebrows by pulling up the skin and stitching it to the bone in her scalp.
So far the procedure has been performed on only a handful of sufferers in Britain, and none of the patients has since experienced a single attack.
Radcliffe, who lives in Eastbourne, said: "I feel fantastic. I've got my life back and I have so much more energy."
At first she had tried painkillers and acupuncture, but they had little effect and all she could do was try to sleep it off. Even when the pain had subsided, she often felt exhausted for the next two days.
However, surgeons warned that it would work only for those whose attacks are caused by the corrugator muscle pressing on the nerve.
"This is not a miracle cure. It does not mean that everyone who has got a migraine will be better by having muscles taken out," said Norman Waterhouse, former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.