Validity of the Bern Score as a Surrogate Marker of Clinical Severity in Patients with Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension

The Bern score is a quantitative scale characterizing brain MR imaging changes in spontaneous intracranial hypotension. Higher scores are associated with more abnormalities on brain MR imaging, raising the question of whether the score can serve as a measure of disease severity. However, the relationship between clinical symptom severity and the Bern score has not been evaluated. Our purpose was to assess correlations between Bern scores and clinical headache severity in spontaneous intracranial hypotension.

This study was a single-center, retrospective cohort of patients satisfying the International Classification of Headache Disorders-3 criteria for spontaneous intracranial hypotension. Fifty-seven patients who completed a pretreatment headache severity questionnaire (Headache Impact Test-6) and had pretreatment brain MR imaging evidence of spontaneous intracranial hypotension were included. Pearson correlation coefficients (ρ) for the Headache Impact Test-6 and Bern scores were calculated. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to assess the ability of Bern scores to discriminate among categories of headache severity.

We found low correlations between clinical headache severity and Bern scores (ρ = 0.139; 95% CI, -0.127-0.385). Subgroup analyses examining the timing of brain MR imaging, symptom duration, and prior epidural blood patch showed negligible-to-weak correlations in all subgroups. Receiver operating characteristic analysis found that the Bern score poorly discriminated subjects with greater headache severity from those with lower severity.

Pretreatment Bern scores show a low correlation with headache severity in patients with spontaneous intracranial hypotension. This finding suggests that brain imaging findings as reflected by Bern scores may not reliably reflect clinical severity and should not replace clinical metrics for outcome assessment.