Having an official diagnosis happened one year after I suspected eagle syndrome and went to the ER for a CT angio. The following was the write-up the emergency doctor gave. I just now read it for the first time…WHAT A JOKE. They treated me awful and told me I was fine, so I left confused and hurt. If they had just listened to me to measure my styloids I could have been diagnosed over a year ago…
Hi Monica!
I’ve deleted the report you posted to protect your privacy as it had your name and date of birth on it, feel free to repost it if you can anonymize it?
It’s so frustrating that members are brushed off by doctors, and that styloids can clearly be seen on CT images but that the radiologists don’t comment on that even when people are complaining of neck pain! I sympathise with you, knowing you’ve suffered an extra year is really annoying, unfortunately you’re not that only one on here who’s had a similar experience, some members have been struggling for years to get a diagnosis!
What are your next steps, are you going to look into having surgery? 
2 Likes
I’m sorry you had to go through that. I went to the ER when the dizziness got so bad that I couldn’t walk with holding on to my husband. I told them that I thought it was coming from my neck. He would only do a head CT not even head and neck. It was a long road after that to confirm that I was correct. It seems like for most of us the process has been frustrating.
2 Likes
Here’s the write up where I was basically just laughed off like a quack. Sucks to just have it written off as anxiety, when it’s like, no this is causing me anxiety, not the other way around!
1 Like
Would be lovely to go back & put them right; I wished I could’ve seen the consultant’s face (who told me that the styloids couldn’t affect the jugular veins) when a CT with contrast confirmed bilateral jugular compression!
2 Likes
Honestly, I’m contemplating emailing my 3D image to the two doctors who told me I didn’t have jugular compression when my CT scan clearly shows it. Even doctors can learn from their mistakes IF their patients (politely) let them know they’ve made them.
2 Likes
I am likely going to make a formal complaint with the hospital administrator. I don’t care about doctors becoming educated, I am sick of doctors dismissing people clearly in distress. It makes me so mad. I literally asked them to measure my styloids and they didn’t. I wonder how they’d react if someone threatened a suit. Ugh, sorry, venting hahaha.
3 Likes
Venting is fine, & I totally understand your frustration. Re: my left styloid which is squashing my left IJV against C1, it looks like my surgeon cut my styloid right up to the IJV & left it compressed. He is one who doesn’t “believe in vascular ES” and is one of the doctors who will receive my email. The other is the interventional radiologist who ordered my scans which show the compression (8 yrs after my ES surgery) but denied I had any & pulled up scans to show me there wasn’t a problem. Because I was ignorant, I didn’t know what I was looking at so concurred all was well until I had someone more adept at reading my scans than I was point out that the IR was wrong.
1 Like