Need Help Diagnosing Chiari

[TSaadon]

Hey Everyone,
I need some help diagnosing Chiari, I have suffered all of my life from pressure, pain&stiffness in my neck - two spots, base of the skull and base of the neck, along with pain&stiffness in my shoulders, upper back, arms and upper chest, aside from the muscle/joint pain I have nausea or some sort of discomfort in my stomach most of the time and light ringing in my ears 24/7.
Recently I had an MRI which discovered a small syrinx at c4-7 but said nothing of Chiari, my neurologist says that my syrinx is acquired and asymptomatic as my neuro exam is completely normal and the syrinx is quite small and attribute all of my symptoms to FIbromyalgia.

To me that doesn't make sense at all, born with Fibro and just happens to have an asymtomatic syrinx?

I saw that upright MRI can tell a lot more in terms of Chiari and CSF flow but apparently we dont have those here in Israel, is there a more definitive test to rule out Chiari?
Best Regards.
Tal.

[selmaS]

  Hi and welcome to the Chiari forum.

May I ask, did you have a brain MRI as well as a cervical spine MRI?
And can you get copies of the MRI on disk? Also can you get a copy of the report?...

You may also want to look into ruling out Ehlers-Danlos*.....I was told I have fibro and then found out I had EDS* and the symptoms are similar except that with fibro you should only have 18 tender points and with EDS* you have much more.