Botox for Excessive Sweating: Part Two, The Side Effects

Botox for hyperhidrosis can only truly be regarded as the last line of defense in sweating stopage. It’s sort of like fixing a damn that’s been built with toothpicks by freezing the river behind the damn. You might stop the flood, however, everything dies in the river, and six months later, your excessive sweating comes back like a lawyer you just hit with your car. Botox for axillary hyperhidrosis is expensive, nonpermanent and lastly, loaded with risks and side effects. Remember, Botox after all is a toxin, botulinum toxin to be specific.

To start out grimly, Botox treatments for hyperhidrosis there have been semi-rare spontaneous fatalities. Sometimes these deaths are associated with dysphagia, pneumonia, and/or other significant debility or anaphylaxis, after the hyperhidrosis procedures with botulinum toxin, or Botox for hyperhidrosis, as it is commonly known.

There also have been quite a number of incidents where adverse events involving the cardiovascular system, which consists of arrhythmia and myocardial infarction, caused fatal outcomes for the hyperhidrosis patients. However, it is to be noted that some of these excessive sweating patients had risk factors such as cardiovascular disease. What is really disturbing is that to this day, the exact relationship of these events to the hyperhidrosis treatment of botulinum toxin injection has not yet been fleshed out, so to speak. They simply cannot figure out how these fatalities happend or where the hyperhidrosis procedure went wrong.

These situations have been reported since the hyperhidrosis remedy has been advertised, however a direct causal relationship to the botulinum toxin injected for axillary hyperhidrosis is yet to be discovered: skin rashes (including erythema multiforme, urticaria and psoriasiform eruption), pruritus or sever itching of often times undamaged skin, and many allergic reactions. Did we mention that Botox is a toxin? However, hyperhidrosis for some individuals is so severe that they’ll risk all fo the above and below to be averted of there extreme sweating problems.

The timeline of these unfortunate events related to the excessive sweating treatment is that these side effects usually occur within the first week of the injection of the hyperhidrois treatment. Some of these side affects may be transient, however they may last a grueling two to three whole months. It is also often times the case that axillary hyperhidrosis patients tell of stories of severe pain around the armpit and chest region, near where the hyperhidrosis treatment had been injected. Furthermore, this localized region around the sweating treatment area may experience tenderness and/or bruising. With the previous in mind, it is to be expected that the muscle tissue feels weak in the localized area of the Botox injection, but more often than not, the adjacent muscles become weak as well, possibly due to the spread of the toxin for the patients sweating condition.
adjacent muscles may also occur due to spread of toxin.

Hard Statistics for Use of Botox for Primary Axillary Hyperhidrosis:

The most frequently cited adverse situations (3 - 10% of patients) following injection of BOTOX® in double-blind studies included extreme injection site pain and hemorrhage, non-axillary sweating (the spread of the sweating problem to other areas), infection, pharyngitis, flu syndrome, headache, fever, neck or back pain, pruritus, and a severe increase in anxiety.

The data reflect 346 patients exposed to BOTOX® 50 Units and 110 patients exposed to BOTOX® 75 Units in each axilla.

Due to the fact that clinical experiments are operated with widely varying or different conditions, undesirable events observed in the clinical trials of a drug cannot be directly compared to rates in the clinical trials of another drug and may not be predictive of rates in the field or upon release into the world.

Botox for Hyperhidrosis Interactions with Other Drugs:

Co-administration of BOTOX® and aminoglycosides or other active substances interfering with neuromuscular transmission (e.g., curare-like compounds) should only be carried out with extreme prejudice as the effects of the toxin may be increased and/or brought to the toxins extreme potential.

The effect of administering different botulinum neurotoxin serotypes at the same time or within several months of each other is yet unknown and should be taken note of. Extreme neuromuscular weakness may be increased by the occurrence of another botulinum toxin prior to the resolution of the effects of a previously administered botulinum toxin for axillary hyperhidrosis. Meaning that once botox is administered for the stopage of armpit excessive sweating, the patient should take extreme precautions as to the exact timeframe at which he or she may administer the procedure for their excessive sweating again.

In conclusion, while it is stated often that Botox for excessive sweating is for excessive situations with hyperhidrosis, there have been case where the patient has simply used Botox for more vain, cosmetic and less severe reasons. The situation with past and future misuse of the treatment for axillary hyperhidrosis is the scary drawback of Botox as an option for extreme cases of excessive sweating. Simply stated, less severe cases of excessive sweating may be treated with this very harsh and expensive treatment for axillary hyperhidrosis.

REFERENCES

Information gained by Allergan, Inc. 1999.

Allergan, Inc. Arandomized, multicenter, double-blind, parallel clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy of BOTOX® (botulinum toxin type A) purified neurotoxin complex manufactured from neurotoxin complex batch BCB2024 to that was created from neurotoxin complex batch 79-11 in blepharospasm subjects. 1997.

No comments yet. Be the first.

Leave a reply