Establishing continuum in Transcranial Doppler characteristics of IIH, migraine and healthy controls- An exploratory...

IIH is a severe form of headache that often has superimposed migraine and often it is very difficult to distinguish the two forms of headache. Intracranial hemodynamics is a relatively unexplored means of distinguishing between the two forms of headache.

We aimed to study intracranial flow dynamics using Transcranial Doppler in patients with IIH, migraine, and normal controls.

It was a hospital-based observational study that included 51 people with IIH, 87 people with migraine, and 101 healthy controls and all were subjected to TCD study after detailed clinical examination.

Mean age of patients in three groups were similar with the mean age in IIH being 33.41 ± 10.75 (age in years ± SD). Vision loss was present in 66.67% of patients with IIH, and most common field defect was generalized constriction (27.5%). Neuroimaging was abnormal in 94.11% of patients of IIH with mean CSF pressure was 31.27±5.32 cm of water. Of all the TCD-measured velocities, mean flow velocity (MFV) showed a significant difference in all three groups with (p-value <0.001). The pulsatility index, both for middle cerebral arteries as well as ophthalmic arteries showed a significant difference in the three groups with the highest values in IIH patients (p-value<.001). The mean VMR in IIH (1.11±0.32) was lower than the mean VMR in migraine (1.34±0.43) as well as controls (1.49±0.46).

TCD parameters like MFV and PI are useful parameters that show considerable variation and can be used to differentiate between IIH and migraine.