This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Are IRs looking at MRIs prior to treatment to see if there is a correlation between locations of lesions and where they find blockages during CCSVI procedures?

If so, could the size and shape of lesions be indicative of the severity of the problem in the vein?

Since neurologists claim some connection between locations of lesions and symptoms, could this help IRs further define areas of treatment so they might be better able to address specific symptoms?

hello Rosegirl,

My name is Cat. I am an RN and I want to clear something up.


The word/term "lesions" mean many different things to different specialty physicians.

Neurologists call the sclerotic areas in the brain noted as white areas on an MRI as lesions. Or plaques.

Interventional radiologists call areas of stenosis or narrowing, flaps, valvular malformations etc as lesions. or cause of reflux. Or anomaly.

So when speaking about MS/CCSVI and lesions ONE MUST CLARIFY.

The area in the brain that has the the plaque is always wrapped around a venule. ( the tinyest veins) These lesions have never been mapped to the areas of function matching disability. Although the inflammation does at times correlate with "a flare up of symptoms" . This has baffled physicians for decades that location does not map like in. Brain surgery.

Also the distribution , severity and location of the vein abnormalities in CCSVI is still in it's infancy of understanding. It does look like these things do influence the degree of reflux and disability. Such as those with absent or severely malformed/
Blocked veins having the most profound impact on disability.

Hope this helps.

By the way an oncologist will call a tumor a lesion, a dermatologist will call a mole a lesion and a primary care doc may call a rash lesions. So it's a specialty thing.

_________________
Cat (Catherine Somerville on FB)
MegansMom
My 35 yo daughter is newly dx 8/19/10 (had 12 symptoms)
Dx with Type A CCSVI- 1 IJV & double "candy wrapper" appearance of her Azygos
Venoplasty done Sept 21, 2010
Doing extremely well-

Cat - Thanks for the tutorial! I'm surprised that the medical terminology isn't more precise.

But the question of correlation of location to disability still exists. It seems that the IRs still have no idea which patients will respond. Some treat only the internal jugulars and maybe the azygous, others treat more locations and treat them more aggressively. Further, at least some of them are hesitant or unwilling to retreat a patient who did not respond.

Since the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 outcomes still seem to apply, there are a lot of people who would like to know how treatment information is being used to help the greater population.

Any comments, Docs?