Hello again, has anyone had any stent or balloon placement intervention as part or following their styloidectomy and / or c1 shave for vascular eagles?
I have consulted doctors here in the UK but they have not mentioned any need for this. Yet I have read that people have this in the USA and EU as part of the surgery or sometimes even before to see if styloidectomy can be avoided.
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Ballooning & stenting before removing the cause of IJV compression are both fairly useless since neither can decompress the IJV.
Stenting is the worst options as stents in that area of the neck are prone to moving. I’ve seen a picture of a person’s IJV that was stented prior to having the styloid/C1 blockage dealt with. Stents are often placed below the compression. In this case the stent had moved into the compressed area & actually bent in half from the pressure of styloid & C1, completely blocking the vein. Stents can’t be removed so this patient was in a world of hurt. There are other similar stories I’ve heard about, too.
Ballooning isn’t dangerous but it’s a waste of time & money because a vein that has pressure from two sides forcing it closed won’t stay open on its own until one or both forces are removed. .
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I agree with @Isaiah_40_31 , stenting or ballooning are not a good idea without the styloid being removed first if that’s what’s caused the compression. Mr Axon talked about stenting maybe being needed after my surgery if the IJV didn’t open fully, but cautioned that it could be painful & couldn’t be removed once in, luckily I didn’t need it. We have had some discussions about stenting you could search for, but here’s an interesting research paper which @Chrickychricky posted by the VES doctors in the US:
New paper by Fargen, Hui and Hepworth, et al - General / Research Papers - Living with Eagle
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