Salivary Ablation

[lisa g]

I am curious if anyone has done salivary ablation for excess saliva. I'm about to go out of my mind with this issue. I have been taking taking Botox injections for it, unfortunately they don't last but 3 weeks. I have been taking 2mg's 2x's a day of Glycopyrrolte that has been useless and 2 drops of Atropine at night which helps alittle.

Any other ideas?

 

[dbel]

Hello Lisa,

After trying glcopyrrolate, atropine, scopolamine patches and botox, I decided to do radiation therapy. I completed 4 rounds of radiation about 6 weeks ago and have noticed improvement. I am still taking glcopyrrolate and atropine as needed but I am no longer needing to use the suction machine nonstop which was really interfering in my quality of life. My biggest fear of doing the salivary ablation is that it would dry my mouth too much but that didn't happen. Hope this answers any questions you might have had.

Take care,
Donna

 

[lisa g]

Thank you Donna, I posed this question to my neurologist and he replied that he didn't know of anyone that did this. Did you go to an ENT for this?

 

[lisa g]

Quick question I read that salivary ablation is an injection into the glands using 2 ingredients. If I'm understanding you correctly you had actual radiation done? Who referred you for the procedure?

 

[dbel]

My palliative neurologist had recently heard of it being done for excess saliva, so she referred me to a radiation oncologist. The radiation oncologist had never heard of it either but consulted a colleague who works at a different health care facility who has had success. My radiation oncologist said it makes sense as decreased saliva is a side effect of doing radiation on people with cancers in the neck. He felt comfortable doing the procedure as it was a low dose of radiation. Although it sounds like this procedure has been around a while to help manage excess saliva, it's still relatively unknown.

My procedure was not an ablation. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[KimT]

Lisa, I've read that interventional radiologists do ablations for people with all kinds of diseases that cause excess saliva.

 

[Nikki J]

Searching radiation on the forum will give some anecdotes

 

[lisa g]

Thanks Nikki, I found some useful articles. I wonder why neurologists aren't recommending alternative treatments when all else fails.

I had to laugh when I received an email from the nurse at my clinic that said my neurologist wanted me to increase the Glycopyrrolte and Atropine. Well duh....You'd think that they would figure out that I've already tried that. I'm going to have my husband put a call to my PCP to find someone local to address this problem.