I had the vp shunt put in first to move the spinal fluid out of my head. Then I had the Chiari decompression surgery and had absolutely no problems with this surgery and it really helped with the remaining headaches. However, I have had 8 surgeries beginning 11/2010 to 10/16/2011. All kinds of things can go wrong with the shunt, including the following that I have experienced: shunt placement in wrong part of brain, shunt malfunctions, tube in abdomen became coiled and I ended up with infection in brain, shunt failure. The biggest problem was the shunt coiled in my abdomen which caused infection and I stayed in the hospital with an external shunt for 19 days to get rid of the infection. The reason I think this is so important is because each time I went to neurologist they always do a CT of head. If they had done a CT of abdomen they would have seen the shunt in abdomen coiled and fluid was not moving and ended up as an infection. Hopefully this is not the case. But, from now on if I have a problems and the CT of head shows normal flow, I will insist on CT of abdomen.