Negative Abdominal Pressure Device Alleviates Symptoms.(pseudotumor cerebri )

2001 MAY 17 - (NewsRx Network) -- by Susan Hasty, senior medical writer - Researchers have tested a device that relieves the debilitating headache and ringing in the ears associated with pseudotumor cerebri (PTC), a condition that affects obese women.

H.J. Sugerman and colleagues at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, in successfully testing their device, also contributed more proof to their long-held hypothesis that PTC is secondary to intra-abdominal pressure (IAP). PTC is a condition commonly associated with morbid obesity in young women and is characterized by cerebral edema and intracranial pressure.

Sugerman and associates hypothesized that PTC is a result of pressure build-up in the abdominal cavity and if they could find a way to relive that pressure, it might also relieve the PTC. The researchers devised a short-term intervention in which seven obese patients were treated with a negative abdominal pressure device.

"Days 1 and 3 were control days; on days 2 and 4 through 6, patients were in the device from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and on nights 7 through 11, they were in the device from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.," Sugerman and coworkers explained.

Patients used a visual scale to measure headache and tinnitus severity, and the Sugerman team estimated IAP from urinary bladder pressure (UBP). The researchers used B-mode ultrasonography to measure the diameter of the internal jugular vein ("Continuous negative abdominal pressure device to treat pseudotumor cerebri," International Journal of Obesity, April 2001;25(4):486-490).

Headache (6.8 [+ or -] 0.8 to 4.2 [+ or -] 0.8, p[less than]O.05) and pulsatile tinnitus (4.2 [+ or -] 0.5 to 1.8[+ or -] 0.5, p[less than]0.02) decreased within five minutes, and both dropped sharply again after one hour (to 2.2 [+ or -] 0.8, ...