Just wanted to pop in here to say that the concern about placing stents in veins is not unwarranted.

One of the patients that Dr. Dake at Stanford operated on had a stent come loose from his upper jugular, and migrate to his heart. This patient had to have emergency open-heart surgery, during which he suffered a minor infarct, and the stent was found to have permanently damaged one of the valves in his heart while it was bouncing around in there. Furthermore, the surgery involved actually cutting into one of his ventricles, and this patient is looking at lifelong and life altering repercussions as a result of the surgery, including cognitive deficits caused by his being on a heart lung machine for over three hours.

Dr. Dake ceased performing procedures four days later.

The danger in placing stents in veins is not that they will go backwards and enter the brain, but that once loose, there is nothing to stop them from heading directly into the heart. Unlike arteries, which grow progressively narrower in the direction of blood flow, veins grow progressively wider, thereby giving a clear path to the heart.

I am cautiously optimistic that CCSVI will prove to be an important discovery in the quest to unravel the mystery of MS, and even attended a successful fundraiser for the continuation of the Buffalo University study last night.

I had a CT venogram done this summer, at the suggestion of Dr. Dake, which revealed that I have stenosis of my upper left internal jugular vein.

I've spoken to several vascular surgeons and radiologists, including some at the NIH, who all sternly cautioned against placing stents in the upper jugulars. A balloon procedure would be the recommended way to go, but Zamboni found that 50% of the patients he treated with a balloon procedure suffered restenosis within 12 months.

If CCSVI does in fact prove to be fact, new procedures and stents will be developed specifically to be used in the CNS venous system.