Has anyone developed a chiari malformation (or was born with) and symptoms occurred after a car accident? Is that possible?
Yes! Chiari is mostly genetic, but there are those rare few of us that it occurred after an accident. I have a CT scan in 1997 to prove that my Chiari did not exist then. My symptoms, and discovery occurred after a cliff diving accident. Since the accident my symptoms have been insane, with never so much as a blurp prior!
Yes. I found out I have Chiari Malformation after I became symptomatic as a result of a whiplash injury from a car accident last August. I had never had any symptoms prior to that. My symptoms showed up within 2 weeks after the car accident and continued to worsen. I had a cine MRI which showed blockage in the flow of CSF and had decompression surgery on January 25. My severe symptoms have resolved since the surgery.
There is an article about a study that was done showing that it is possible to develop symptoms after head or neck trauma that I think I found on conquerchiari.org. It is very interesting.
I became disabled in 2003 after waking up from a surgery (gastric bypass) with back pain,neck pain,head aches, and numbness and tingling in my legs,arms and feet. Later that year I was stopped in a yield lane and someone hit me from behind and threw me across 3 lanes of traffic and I ended up with pretty bad whiplash. I was sent to a Chiopractor 3 times a week for 3 months and he put me on all kinds of pulling machines and traction and would adjust my neck twice a week.
He never did anything other than xrays on me so he never saw the Chiari. My pain did get worse after that and I was told it was all in my head....I know better! I wasnt diagnosed until 2010 with Chiari but since then I have been told by a few Neurologists and read a few articles that said Chiropractors and manipulations can be very bad on someone with Chiari.
Sorry this was so long, hope it helped in some small way.
Yes my symptoms started after slipping on the ice two years ago and have worsened with annual hits and a car accident since (Contemplating locking myself in a padded room from february to march from now on!).
I am unsure if this has always been there but I certainly didn't have these life altering symptoms before and I was quite the tomboy as a child.