Omaha resident Kendra Jackson was told for years that allergies were the cause of her chronically runny nose and severe headaches. But her story made headlines this week after she finally discovered the real culprit: fluid leaking from the area around her brain.
KETV Omaha reported this week on the story, which luckily has a happy ending. Doctors at Nebraska Medicine diagnosed Jackson with a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak, which apparently started after a car accident in 2013. Since then, she’d been losing approximately 8 ounces of fluid a day.
Using non-invasive surgical techniques, doctors were able to plug Jackson’s leak using her own fatty tissue–and she’s already improving. “I don’t have to carry around the tissue anymore,” she told KETV, “and I’m getting some sleep.”
Doctor after doctor told Kendra the fluid coming our of her nose was because of allergies. But after years of coping…
So how worried should the rest of us be when our noses won’t stop running? To put things in perspective, Health spoke with Chirag Patel, MD, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at Loyola Medicine. Dr. Patel was not involved in this case, but he does specialize in CSF leaks and treats them often. Here, he answers our most pressing questions.
What is cerebrospinal fluid, anyway?
“Cerebrospinal fluid is the clear, watery fluid that surrounds and protects the brain,” says Dr. Patel. “It provides some buffering, and it exists at a certain pressure that has to be kept pretty consistent.”
That pressure is regulated, in part, by the cardiovascular system: It fluctuates with each heartbeat, and it goes up and down with changing blood pressure. If the pressure around the brain becomes too high, that fluid can wear away at the bone that separates the brain and the nose—or the brain and the ear—and cause a hole where fluid can leak out.
This is known as a spontaneous CSF leak. The condition is most common in women of childbearing age, says Dr. Patel, but it can also happen to men and at any age. Overweight individuals are also at increased risk, since they tend to have higher blood pressure; in fact, doctors say they’re seeing an increase in CSF leaks due to rising rates of obesity.
CSF leaks can also occur after a traumatic experience, such as a car accident, sinus surgery, a bad fall, or any other type of injury to the head or the base of the skull. In Jackson’s case, she says her runny nose, coughing, and sneezing began “a couple years after a traumatic car accident” in which her face hit the dashboard.
What are the symptoms of CSF leaks?
CSF leaks are often mistaken for sinus problems or allergies, because a runny nose is one of the most common symptoms. But this isn’t just any runny nose, says Dr. Patel. “Usually with a CSF leak, the dripping is only on one side of the nose—and it drips constantly, like a faucet,” he says. “Also, if it has a salty or metallic taste, that’s a sign that it could be spinal fluid.”
Cerebrospinal fluid can also leak from the ear—something that happened to Mark Hoffman, the subject of another scary news story published last year. Hoffman told the Indianapolis Star that he’d wake up every morning with clear fluid on his pillow, and that he’d used more than 5,000 cotton balls over the past 10 years to absorb the fluid that dripped all day long.
“If the leak is in the ear, it can cause hearing loss and a sense that the ear is clogged,” says Dr. Patel. “When the ear gets examined, the doctor sees fluid behind the ear drum.”
How dangerous are CSF leaks?
CSF leaks aren’t immediately life-threatening, but they can cause serious complications. “If you lose enough fluid fast enough, it causes pretty intense headaches,” says Dr. Patel. “But the bigger concern is that your body can’t keep up with fluid production, and air enters the space around the brain where the fluid should be.”
Air can also be forced into that space when a person blows their nose repeatedly, in an attempt to clear up their runny nose and “allergies,” says Dr. Patel. “If there’s too much air, it will push the brain around to create space, and that can become life-threatening,” he says.
CSF leaks can also become dangerous if part of the brain starts to push through the hole in the bone. “Anytime there’s communication between the brain and the outside world, there’s a chance you could develop an infection,” says Dr. Patel. In fact, he adds, about 15% of people with an active CSF leak develop meningitis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the brain.
How are CSF leaks treated?
Fortunately, once a CSF leak is diagnosed, it can usually be repaired with non-invasive surgery. “In most cases, when there is a nasal leak, we do the surgery entirely through the nose—just like we would do sinus surgery,” says Dr. Patel.
If a leak was caused by trauma or surgery, patching the hole is usually sufficient, says Dr. Patel. But if it was a spontaneous leak, meaning it was caused by a buildup of pressure over time, it’s important to address the underlying cause so another leak doesn’t develop.
“That means there needs to be long-term management of whatever it was that caused that increased pressure,” he says. “That could mean weight loss, diet changes, or medications that can bring down the pressure.” Some people need to have shunts implanted to regularly drain cerebrospinal fluid and keep their pressure controlled.
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How common are CSF leaks?
Research suggests that spontaneous CSF leaks affect at least five out of every 100,000 people each year, and experts believe that many more people may go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for long periods of time. That number also doesn’t include CSF leaks that are caused by trauma.
Still, says Dr. Patel, “there are a lot of reasons you might have a runny nose or a clogged ear, and this would usually be lower on the list of possible causes.” In other words, he says, don’t freak out at every sign of allergies or a simple cold.
If your symptoms persist, however, or if they’re accompanied by other worrisome signs (like severe headaches), get them checked out. Some CSF leaks require a CT scan or a spinal tap for diagnoses—but if you’re able to collect a sample of the liquid, doctors can also test it for a specific protein that’s only present in cerebrospinal fluid.
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