Thank you. This does sound typical of me. The brain fog, fatigue, memory problems (I feel like I have dementia at 56), insomnia, visual changes/problems getting worse), chronic pain. I failed to mention those in my latest post. Again, all these things can be explained by other syndromes so it’s quite difficult to tease out the cause.
Based on studies these are the symptoms of IJVS. See how it compares with yours
Internal jugular vein stenosis (IJVS) are characterized as a series of non-specific symptoms, including head symptoms (headache, head noise, dizziness and memory decline), eye symptoms (eye bloating, diplopia, blurred vision and visual field defect), ear symptoms (tinnitus and high-frequency hearing decline), neck discomfort, or sleeping disorder [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Hence, IJVS does not draw enough attention by both patients and doctors, which often results in misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis. Moreover, the etiologies of IJVS are not fully understood. To the best of our knowledge, venous wall is thinner than that of artery, which lacks smooth muscle and elastic fibers, whereby, veins are more vulnerable to deform under extrinsic compression [10]. Therefore, external structures oppression may be one of the most important etiologies of IJVS. Herein, we describe a cases series of styloid oppression-induced IJVS on the aspects of clinical characteristics, diagnosis and treatment, to give a reference in clinical practice.
Another Study
Clinical features
Prominent clinical symptoms of cervical spondylotic IJV compression syndrome in the present study were as follows: head noise (33/46, 71.7%), tinnitus (32/46, 69.6%), insomnia (31/46, 67.4%), dizziness (25/46, 54.3%), hearing impairment (22/46, 47.8%), headache (18/46, 39.1%), visual impairment (16/46, 34.8%), dry eyes (16/46, 34.8%), uncomfortable neck (14/46, 30.4%), vertigo (9/46, 19.6%), anxiety or depression (9/46, 19.6%), memory deterioration (5/46, 10.9%), and nausea or vomiting (4/46, 8.7%). Other atypical symptoms included head numbness, palpitation, fainting, and dyspnea, each of which occurred in only one patient. The median number of manifestations was 5 (IQR, 4-6) for the involved patients. Details are shown in Table 1.
Study Srouce : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cns.13148
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Wow. thank you. sounds possible but again, other syndromes have similar symptoms so it’s hard to consider undergoing surgery unless I am darn sure it will work. I don’t know how to figure that out and neither do the doctors–or at least the ones I have seen, or they are not interested or know nothing about the other disorders as they don’t work on the whole person. Thanks for this!
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Unfortunately the doctors can’t say for sure & don’t want to give patients false hope- it’s the same for most of us who opt for surgery that we can’t be sure what symptoms will disappear afterwards, but we get to the point where our quality of life is being affected enough that we’ll take that chance. Looking at your CT images on the other thread, those styloids are really long & angled, so it would be pretty likely that they are causing problems!
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Well, ultimately it is your decision on how to proceed but here in this blog, we try to help each other with information sharing such as the proper doctors and their locations, the imaging signs of ES if one is wondering if they have it and need to confirm it with doctors that are familiar with it. We also share the latest research on ES and any new treatments…etc. This is what @Jules & @Isaiah_40_31 have been doing over the years and have helped countless of desperate patients like me with valuable information on this condition. There is no blood test or tissue sample that can be obtained & used to diagnose ES. It is primarily diagnosed with imaging coupled with patients symptoms. Hope you find answers soon.
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