Hey guys. I was diagnosed with chiari in April with an 8mm herniation. I have a wonderful neurologist who right away told me everything lined up with chiari. He sent me to a neurosurgeon and this neurosurgeon wanted me to get a cine mri and spine mri [spine to check for a syrinx]. Both came back normal so he doesn’t want to proceed with surgery. Surprisingly to me, I’m heartbroken. Though I never thought I would wish for brain surgery, I was so looking forward to something to help my problems. My question for you all is, did anyone get a normal cine result but still proceed to surgery? Should I get a second opinion? I’m just devastated because I thought we were finally figuring things out. Has anyone gotten more than 1 cine because 1 wasn’t done right? Thanks for all your help! I’m very upset to be back to sqaure one.
Hi…
I can understand exactly what you are saying! My CINE came back as diminished CSF flow…my NS went on to tell me that , even though the CINE is a good tool…it is not the end all, be all , for him, as a NS in deciding how to proceed.
He mainly went by my symptoms after we waited many mths …as well, other tests were done to rule out other illnesses.
Have you thought about setting another opinion from a NS??
Let us know how you are making out.
I am definitely considering getting a second opinion. My concern is that I will see a surgeon that would want to do the surgery just based on my original mri. I want to make sure the surgery is worthwhile to me, not just something that will make things worse. Thanks for your response!
Did you NS review the MRI himself or just get the report from the hospital? My CINE was read as normal but two NS who looked at the disc both said the flow was definitely diminished. They said a lot of times unless it's 100% blocked the radiologist on duty will read it as normal. Of course mine was done in a rural area and where no one seemed to even know what chiari was or what they were looking for! lol
Mandy has some good suggestions of other things that could cause your symptoms.