1 year (almost) post right sided styloidectomy/C1 resection update

A great big thank you for being so generous with your posts and sharing all that precious infos and experiences here! :pray: :pray: :pray: That`s been a big help for me, and I guess, for many others too…
I hope you are doing much better now and the concervative measures have really helped you.

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Thank you so much for that comment, I was seriously concerning prolotherapy, now will put this idea aside.

But what I can’t understand, the place of the compression between C1 and styloid is at the place of the orange circle, whereas the vein got wider at the other place, at the blue circle, and got thinner at the compression site… How come? :thinking:

The vein gets thinner at the compression site because it’s being squashed between the styloid process & C-1 or by some other means at that location. It’s thicker above the compressed area because the blood is backed up there since it can’t flow normally through the squashed area because of the smaller size of the opening in the vein.

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Well the model isn’t accurate, because sucking through the straw gives negative pressure and bulging occurs due to the reasons related to the positive pressure*, so there wouldn’t be any bulging no matter if the straw is pinched or not.

More accurately it would be to describe it as trying to inflate a balloon. The bottleneck (narrow balloon’s part) gives resistance and the cheeks will puff out. But try to simply blow the air out from lungs with the mouth wide open, and the cheeks won’t bulge because there is no resistance (causing positive pressure).

*There are certain aerodynamic nuances that under specific conditions lead to the negative pressure causing positive pressure in case of various air vertexes, pulsed form of negative pressure at certain air flow velocities, quantities, and forms. But that’s not the best place to discuss about it :laughing:

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Thank you for the correction @vdm. I knew my illustration was faulty, but I couldn’t figure out a more accurate example. I’ll delete it so it doesn’t confuse anyone. What you wrote is a much better explanation (& accurate). :joy:

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This is a great explanation @vdm. As someone who has played a lot in the lab with microfluidic devices, certainly sounds about right

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The compression site is at the orange circle, right? Why after the surgery the site at the blue circle got bigger, not at the orange circle, as expected?

What a lucid example with the baloon, thank you!) But still, according to the pressure drop comparison model of M_UK, if we apply this, that would mean, there was no compression at the site of C1, but it appeared after the surgery… Given the compression site is at the orange circle…

@Irina777 - I understand your question but am not sure of the answer except that perhaps the size of the veins is somewhat dynamic/flexible to accommodate different neck positions, rates of blood flow (i.e. at rest vs when moving), etc. Maybe @vdm or someone else will have an opinion that answers your question better.

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So there can be many reasons why compression at the specific spot happens. Best is to have a look at the CT scan/MRI. Could be scar tissue, lymph node, swollen muscle, resected muscle hanging free, permanent inflammation or anything else…

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