Good afternoon, friends!
My name is Egor, I am from Russia, I am 38 years old. For many years, I have been suffering from serious health problems, which, as I already believe, are related to compression of the two internal jugular veins.
My symptoms include :
• A constant feeling of “fog” in the head and lethargy, it is difficult to study, generally mental stres s.
• Poor memory, absent - mindednes s .
• Constant noise / ringing in the ears, chronic nasal congestion, a feeling of bursting of the head – pressure in the head (intracranial pressure ), lack of air, foggy head. These symptoms worsen with little physical exertion, or heat of +28 degrees Celsius and above. Also, during physical exertion, spots appear in front of the eyes (photopsia) – cloudy spots or yellow (when feeling worse), rarely darkens in the eyes to the beat of the heartbeat, lips, cheeks and hands become numb (hands are more likely to be associated with TOS). In the heat, vision sometimes disappears by 40-60% (I just can’t see part of the area). With mental or emotional stress, hyperventilation and lack of air also app ear.
• “Flies” or “midges” in front of the eyes.
• Rarely mild dizz iness.
• Poor sleep, I can’t sleep on the couch-bad sleep lying on your back (I feel sick), I wake up at night every 1.5- 3 hours from lack of air and feeling unwell and severe ringing in my ears.I sleep only on my side, alternately changing sides every hour (it’s easier to sleep on an orthopedic pillow on my side higher so that my head and neck are evenly posit ioned).
• Frequent attacks of suffocation, especially with minor physical e xertion.
I practically don’t drink alcohol, it makes my intracranial pressure rise badly after a couple of hours, and the next day it’s very bad, even from 0.7-1 liters of beer.
• Dysphagia-problems with swallowing food, which often gets a little into the bronchi. Bronchospasms often appear -it is difficult to breathe .
• I can’t talk for long, more than 25-30 minutes, and I almost always breathe throug h my mouth.
• There is also a Kimmerli Anomaly (ponticul us posticus)
• The stair muscles are enlarged , the distance between the anterior stair muscle and the long neck muscle is only 5 mm.
I do not have an overt styloid process, I have a thick digastric muscle, the stylo-hyoid muscle is calcified by segments, abnormal hyoid bone, Ki mmerli and TOS
These symptoms began in adolescence, around the age of 13-14. At the same time, I experienced tachycardia, bradycardia, severe dizziness and headaches (on the left) and nausea, and my blood pressure was unstable. By the age of 17-18, the condition had stabilized, but drowsiness and lethargy appeared. Tinnitus appeared at the age of about 15 years and gradually progressed. By the age of 20-21, physical activity began to be very difficult. The most pronounced deterioration began after the age of 30.
Unfortunately, doctors in Russia do not recognize problems related to veins as the cause of such symptoms. I’ve been seeing doctors since I was 14, but to no avail.
I will upload the pictures and photos later, when the restr iction is lifted.
Now I’m thinking of going to Turkey, to Dr. Kamran Agayev, to have the surgery redone or done on the left side.
At the age of 34, I began to independently study medical literature, human anatomy, and read CT and MRI scans, and I think I found a possible cause of my suffering. Five CT scans showed that there was a problem in the images, but it proved extremely difficult to convin ce doctors of this.
With great difficulty, I managed to persuade a neurosurgeon in Russia (V. A. Lukyanchikov, from the N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Medicine, or the Scientific Center of Neurology, Moscow) to perform the operation. On July 9, 2025, decompression of the transverse process C1, partial resection of the transverse process on the right, and the shaving method (high-speed diamond-coated drill) were performed. The surgeon removed about 5 mm of the transverse process, without affecting the muscles (biconvex and stylo-lingual) that en circle this process.
After the surgery, I felt a significant improvement (about 70%), but only for 2-3 weeks. However, as the wound healed and the tissues thickened, the symptom s gradually returned.
I went to the same neurosurgeon again, but he refused to perform a second operation, as he does not believe in veins. Unfortunately, I have not found other specialists in Russia who are ready to perform such an intervention.
The postoperative MRI shows an artifact, which I assume is caused by diamond chips from the drill remaining in the area of surgery. Decompression of the right internal jugular vein, judging by the MRI, did not occur: in the area of the transverse process, the vein looks gray, and only at the confluence of the facial vein it turns black, which, as I understand it, indicates t he speed of blood flow.
ALSO in 2012 (although my head doesn’t turn normally) for 2-3 hours a day for a month, I slept on a hard couch face down, relaxing my neck and spine, placing a thin pillow under my chest and arms, one under my forehead, the other under my mouth to breathe (I almost always breathe through my mouth). A month has passed and I have received a 100% positive effect. I was a completely different person, I breathed normally through my nose, I was cheerful and energetic, there was practically no ringing in my ears. I stopped sleeping face down and after 5 days all the symptoms came back. A short and slow run of 1200-1600 meters, 2 times a week, also helps. My head brightens a little after running, but running itself is hard to bear, espe cially at the beginning.
In addition, I would like to ask the forum administrators to create a separate forum thread so that people who have already had surgery can talk about their current state of health after half a year or a year. That is, they briefly describe what symptoms they had, and which symptoms went away after half a year or a year, or all went away. the symptoms. Who did they have surgery for, what was done to them during the surgery (removal of the styloid, resection of the digastric muscle, and so on). For example, I only got the effect for 2-3 weeks.
