Dr. Athos Patsalides and Dr. Marc Dinkin have published new results from their clinical trial testing venous sinus stenting (VSS), showing for the first time a quantitative reduction in intracranial pressure in patients who have had the stenting procedure. The paper, “Venous sinus stenting lowers the intracranial pressure in patients with idiopathic intracranial hypertension,” was published in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery and is available to all through Open Access (download a PDF here). The results show that VSS is an effective tool for patients with pseudotumor cerebri (IIH)—many of whom suffered with intense headaches, vision problems, and often intractable whooshing sound in their ears.
Patients who underwent VSS reported an improved quality of life—their vision mostly restored, headaches abated, and the whooshing sound disappeared – but there had been no empirical data to show that VSS made a difference in their measurable intracranial pressure.
This paper measures the efficacy of VSS and documents that intracranial pressure was lowered independent of medication use or weight gain (patients with IIH often have weight issues). To come to these conclusions, Dr. Patsalides and his team measured the cerebrospinal fluid opening pressure (CSF-OP) of 50 patients before and after VSS between January 2012 and June 2017 and found a “statistically significant 45% mean reduction in intra-cranial pressure three months after the procedure.”
These findings further validate VSS as a means of treating IIH and pulsatile tinnitus without using medication.
In addition to Dr. Patsalides & Dr. Dinkin, the paper was co-authored by Dr. Cristiano Oliveira, Dr. Jessica Wilcox, Kenroy Brown, Kartikey Grover, and Dr. Yves Pierre Gobin.
