New cases series of patient twith chronic headache that oft went thru a litany of doctors without success with a clearly treatable disease. Each gave a history of headache on arising and relieved by lying down that was discounted because intracranial hypotension is so rare.
The commonly missed diagnosis of intracranial hypotension
Interdisciplinary Neurosurgery: Advanced Techniques and Case Management
(2016) in press
Ashlee N. Ruggeri-McKinley , RN, Brock
doi:10.1016/j.inat.2016.01.002
http://ac.els-cdn.com/S2214751915300207/1-s2.0-S2214751915300207-main.pdf?_tid=908d4dd0-c256-11e5-a77e-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1453611455_59b6fb04d6dcdc73bf5e28de2255ad77
- mention how headaches can be misdiagnosed for decades and people subjected to “unnecessary testing and treatment”.
- Physical exams are negative so a detailed history of pain getting up and relieved by being lying down becomes imperative
- Injecting blood into spinal fluid as a patch can cure the disorder.
One case stands out to me:
- 28 year woman with daily subacute severe throbbing and stabbing headaches for 9 months
- Occipital pains at start then going to forehead as well
- started at morning or midday and progressed in severity
- she noted that pains are worse on standing and so spent most of her time lying down.
- Had migraine features which confused things – photophobia (light sensitivity), and nausea
- also had interscapular pain, tinnitus, diminished hearing, and urge incontinence (spastic bladder) which could be dismissed as Fibromyalgia features
- Interestingly, this case did note improvement with caffeine which is typical for intracranial hypotension
- MRI (I presume dye enhanced) showed brain and spinal cord changes.
- Blood patch resolved issues
Comment – what I fearsubjects with superimposed migraines gets this disordermay just presetn with a chronic headache all the time and issues with standing are less obvious. I also fear that headache subjects are getting non-dye enhanced MRI of only the brain which would also miss the spinal features. Gadolinium-enhanced axial T1-weighted image is needed to demonstrate the “diffuse pachymeningeal (dural) enhancement”. Typically, neurologists order dye enhancement just in cases of suspected Multiple Sclerosis. In:
AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2013 Feb;200(2):400-7. doi: 10.2214/AJR.12.8611.
Intracranial hypotension: improved MRI detection with diagnostic intracranial angles.Shah LM(1), McLean LA, Heilbrun ME, Salzman KL.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23345364
They state “The classic MRI features of intracranial hypotension can be variable and subjective.”
In:
Lu, Yu-Feng CHeng1 CHeng-HsIen, and WeI-CHe LIn.
Application of Cine Phase Contrast MRI in Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension Before and After Treatment.”
J Radiol Sci 2014:39: 67-75
They referenced 3 articles that state:
“However, some studies have reported that up to 20% of patients with clinically apparent SIH (Spontaneous intracranial hypotension) lack any abnormal cranial MRI findings”
http://www.rsroc.org.tw/db/Jrs/article/V39/N3/390301.pdf
I bet those statistics would be even higher in non-dye enhanced cases.
Needless to say I have no faith in MRI imaging here, where the ?lazy way out tends to be in the non-dye enhanced imaging and there is an excessive confidence that MRI imaging will give all the answers.
Any comments?