Fusing the neck’s top two vertebrae can prevent repeat strokes in children with bow hunter syndrome, a rare condition that affects a handful of U.S. pediatric patients each year, UT Southwestern researchers suggest in a recent study. The finding, published online in Child’s Nervous System, offers a new way to treat these children and protect them from potentially lifelong neurological consequences.
Bow hunter syndrome – so named because of the head’s position when a person is shooting an arrow – is a condition affecting children and adults in which turning the head compresses blood vessels supplying the back of the brain from the vertebral artery. In adults, this condition is usually caused by a bone spur on the neck and presents with temporary symptoms of fainting, dizziness, headache, or tinnitus that resolve when the head turns back to a neutral position.
But for children with bow hunter syndrome, the cause is often unclear, and they have a far different and more serious presentation, explains study leader Bruno P. Braga, MD, assistant professor of neurological surgery and pediatrics at UTSW and an attending physician at Children’s Health. This condition is only discovered when these young patients suffer a tear in the vertebral artery, which spills out blood clots that subsequently cause a stroke. Even after this tear heals, it leaves a weak spot that is vulnerable to re-tearing and potentially causing additional strokes.
