Each patient has a better or worse prognosis. The good thing about botulinum toxin is that, applied to the right patient and in the right places, the success rate is above 90%.
Another positive point of the use of this substance is the few side effects it produces in the body. In fact, in the vast majority of cases the negative effects derived from the treatment are almost nonexistent. This is because it is a local treatment which does not pass into the blood, it is not systemic. The worst that can happen is that there may be an infection at the injection site, but with proper hygienic measures this should not occur.
As a specialist, when deep muscles are injected, a certain amount of caution should be exercised in patients who are anti-coagulated. Such a patient could cause an undesired weakness of the muscle and, although in any case, this weakness would not last more than 4 weeks, the patient’s quality of life would be impaired.
The use of Botulinum Toxin is frequent in Neurology, in fact its applications in this specialty are very diverse. For example, if it is applied on a muscle of the face that is causing, by its contraction, a wrinkle, it will improve it and make it disappear for a while. If I apply it on a muscle that has a lot of tone, it relaxes it, so the patient can move the joint of that muscle better and with less pain. If there is an abnormal position, as in a torticollis, so that the patient’s neck is deviated by the contraction of a muscle, by weakening that muscle, the patient no longer has that torticollis without losing functionality. And although the reality is that Botulinum Toxin does not cure definitively, but it does improve pain, thus enriching the patient’s quality of life.