Hi there,

I've just joined this site, although I spent quite a while reading other people's posts on here when my TOS was diagnosed.

I'm a medical student, so it was really discovered by chance when I realised that the pulsation in my neck wasn't normal! It had been there for years, but when I saw a vascular surgeon (he decided to do a doppler ultrasound and a CT angio) he diagnosed it as arterial TOS.

I have a pair of extra ribs, but the right one was causing my subclavian artery to be constricted and as a result had developed a pseudo-aneurysm (what I had seen pulsing in my neck). I'd also had some splinter haemorrhages in my nails due to micro-emboli in my fingers of my right hand and was strongly advised to have surgery as the surgeon thought that there was a high risk of eventually getting thrombus in the subclavian artery, potentially cutting off the circulation to my arm. He also put my on aspirin to try and prevent this before the op.

A lot of the symptoms I'd been getting suddenly made sense - aside from the pulsation in my neck, and the splinter haemorrhages, I also had a colder right hand, and got tingling in the little finger of my hand intermittently (it turned out my T1 nerve was also hooked over the rib).

I went ahead and had the surgery 3.5 weeks ago. The surgeon removed the scalene muscle and the cervical rib (I got to see it, and it was so much smaller than I'd imagined!) but had to make an incision above my clavicle to get access to the artery. It went well and I've been back at uni for the past couple of weeks... no info yet on whether the artery has repaired itself, but I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to find out...