Temporal Artery Ligation

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in the temporal artery ligation. I have previously had a treatment for this from a vascular surgeon about 1 month ago and I am not happy with the results. I believe this is because I only had a single point ligation on either side and from reading through it seems this rarely works unless you are lucky. 

At the moment the arteries are approx. 50% reduced from before, and don’t seem to bulge up as much when I drin and are much quicker to reduce in size, but I can still feel pulsations so I presume I have some backflow here. Also, the left side seems to snake a bit further across the head all the time now. 

Can you let me know if I would be able to have a further ligation done and if this will resolve the issue ? The reason I am contacting you primarily is because your cosmetic background as I understand further cuts would need to be made towards the top of the head where they are more visible. I am concerned about scarring here as from the last operation I was left with scars approx. 2cms long although they don’t bother me very much as they are close to the hairline.

A: Thank you for your inquiry. Please send me some pictures of your temporal regions for my assessment. As you have mentioned it almost always requires more than a single point of ligation in my experience. In fact, I have never done a temporal artery ligation using only a single point ligation. Whether additional points of ligation would be beneficial can only be determined by actually doing it but I would suspect that it would.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana