This case report presents pathological findings in a rare case of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) caused by spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) that was treated successfully with mechanical thrombectomy. The etiologies and prognosis of CVT vary, and CVT resulting from SIH is particularly uncommon and challenging to diagnose and manage. In this case, magnetic resonance imaging revealed signs consistent with both SIH and CVT, which contributed to the patient’s worsening weakness. The patient was treated with a combination of endovascular thrombectomy and epidural blood patch, followed by anticoagulation therapy, and recovered without any complications. A pathological analysis of the retrieved thrombus using hematoxylin and eosin staining showed a high proportion of fibrin and platelets, which could shed light on the mechanism of CVT induced by SIH under conditions of low blood flow due to venous engorgement.
Spontaneous intracranial hypotension usually manifests orthostatic headache caused by cerebrospinal fluid leakage without procedure or trauma to meninges. There was temporal relationship between intracranial hypotension and various precipitating factors such as positional changes, valsalva maneuver, minor trauma and only rarely airplane travel. Here, we report the first korean case of spontaneous intracranial hypotension after airplane travel. A 37-year-old woman presented with orthostatic headache after airplane travel. Her cerebrospinal fluid pressure is 55 mmCSF and cervical spinal level of cerebrospinal fluid leakage confirmed by cisternography. Her symptoms resolved after the epidural blood patch and she was later discharged without any complications.
Spontaneous intracranial hypotension is characterized by orthostatic headache caused by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage. However, clinical presentation of SIH is variable, and normal or high intracranial pressure in CSF study is not uncommon. Infratentorial superficial siderosis (ISS) shares similar pathomechanism with SIH, as developed after chronic CSF leakage, whilst several years of latency after SIH onset. Here, we report a 47-year-old male patient who had experienced prominent orthostatic headache twenty years before, and presented reverse-orthostatic headache in this time, accompanying with radiological features of SIH and ISS in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). CSF leakage was confirmed by spinal MRI and MR myelography, and his headache was aggravated after epidural blood patch.