First Dutch woman gets implant against migraine

The test patient received two slices above the ear. “You push the strip through it,” says Professor Frank Huygen of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam who performed the operation. “An instrument has been developed with which you can do it very easily and without being able to damage anything. You only have very small scars on the side of your head on these slices. ”

The strips are directly under the skin. “On the back of the head and on a nerve, just above the eyebrows. That is why it is so important that it is just as thin as paper, because of course you have very little space there. ”

The patient then has to work with a portable device in daily life. This is connected to the magnets of the implant on the head. The therapy is switched on with the push of a button. “The device then gives very small electrical signals to those nerves,” says Hubert Martens of Salvia Bioelectronics that develops the method. “You don’t feel anything about that. All electrical signals run through your nervous system. That ensures that you can move, feel that you function. With a disease such as chronic migraine, those signals can be out of balance. “

“We try to restore that balance so that migraine attacks continue less often. And that its intensity decreases. Because the implant is very close to the nerves, it gives exactly the correct amount of energy. This reduces the intensity of the migraine. “

The 25-year-old Mirte cannot work because of her chronic migraine:

This therapy is called neuromodulation and has been around for a very long time. It is used for many other syndromes, such as Parkinson’s or for epilepsy. “We try to develop a technology that is specifically suitable for migraine.”

Implinating the strip is a condition for making it work well. “You have to get very close to those nerves. There are products on the market that try to do it through the skin, but the skin is a barrier so that not the amount of energy required is released at the right location. That works less well. “

Salvia Biedectronics is the Eindhoven company behind the implant. In 2020, the company won 26 million euros in financing with fifty employees to develop and test the technology. Migraine therapy has been developed since 2017 at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven.

Until now there has been testing in Australia and Belgium. Thirty patients try it out. Since Monday there is also a patient in the Netherlands with the implant for the first time. “Of course we are very proud of that.” In addition to the Erasmus MC, the St. Antonius Hospital Utrecht/Nieuwegein is also participating in the study.

First the product must be tested considerably to show that it works and is safe. Neither should people be bothered by it. “We have developed it to make sure you can’t feel it. It is precisely for that reason that it is so thin.”

This could be used all over the world. “There are a huge number of people who suffer from chronic migraine. On average, it is one to two percent of the population worldwide. Often those are people in the prime of their lives. Twenty, thirty to forty years old, often women. If medication does not work well, you are at the mercy of your fate. “

“Migraine is much more than a headache. There are many more symptoms. The sad thing is that the most common therapy for severe migraine is locking yourself. In a dark bedroom. All stimuli are then too much and painful.”

“Patients find it difficult to build a career. Sometimes they also have to choose not to found a family. So it really has a huge impact on your life.”

The company hopes to market the implants within now and five years.