BACKGROUND We describe the case of a 38 year old male with Marfan syndrome who presented with orthostatic headaches and seizures. CASE PRESENTATION The patient was diagnosed with Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension secondary to CSF leaks, objectively demonstrated by MR myelogram with intrathecal contrast. Epidural autologous blood patch was administered at the leakage site leading to signifi...

Endonasal skull base surgery (see Fig. 1) has proven to be a safe, effective, and significantly less invasive surgical approach when compared to open, highly invasive techniques [1]. Nevertheless, one initial difficulty with this minimally invasive approach has been postoperative leakage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) [2]. While the incidence of postoperative CSF leaks are low (<1%), the potentia...

Spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) otorrhea is defined as CSF otorrhea where there are no identifiable causes including previous trauma, surgery, infection, neoplasm or congenital anomaly. The condition is rare. The origin of CSF leak is commonly a defect in the tegmen of the middle cranial fossa. The pathophysiology of spontaneous CSF otorrhea is unclear. Two theories of the etiology of bon...

A 44-year-old Chinese man with a history of nasopharyngeal carcinoma that was treated with radiotherapy presented with fluid in the middle ear. We performed a myringotomy and subsequently made a diagnosis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage secondary to osteoradionecrosis of the temporal bone. To the best of our knowledge, this is only the second reported case of an otogenic CSF leak resulting...

A microfluidic device with integrated sample preparation is introduced for the detection of cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea—a condition resulting in leakage of CSF from the nose due to head trauma. While CSF rhinorrhea is a serious condition, current state-of-the-art diagnostics are expensive or slow (MRI, CT scan or ELISA). We show the capability of a microfluidic immunoassay to accept and proc...

A radionuclide counting method, performed with the patient prone and the neck flexed, was used successfully to diagnose CSF rhinorrhea in two patients. A normal radionuclide ratio (radionuclide counts in pledget/radionuclide counts in 1-ml blood sample) was obtained in 11 normal control subjects. Significance was determined to be a ratio greater than 0.37. Use of radionuclide counting method of...

Serum contains 1-transferrin, and CSF contains 1 and 2 transferrins. The 2-transferrin in CSF is desialylated because of the presence of neuraminidase in the central nervous system. Hence, 2-transferrin is used as a marker of CSF leakage (1 ). Because 1-transferrin was present in serum but absent in drainage fluid, additional neuraminidase activity was suspected. This suspicion was supported by...