Abstract
This study is a review summarizing all that is known and published about chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI), together with the author's long-term experience in the fields of multiple sclerosis and stroke, providing groundwork for critical discussion. In the light of our experience, the concept of CCSVI cannot be ignored and it is essential that extensive future studies into it be performed.
We feel that recently-published expectations are overestimated (based upon our own ultrasound examination results in 10 MS subjects and 10 healthy controls). Use of PTA (percutaneous transluminal angioplasty) and stenting as a therapeutical approach in venous insufficiency, without taking physiological and anatomical findings into account, has not to date proved objectively beneficial and is not indicated in MS patients.
Neither is it approved by acknowledged authorities such as the Food and Drug Administration of the USA.