As most of us know, there is a great deal of problems with the current, and popular, shunting techniques used. Lumbar shunts over drain because they are at the bottom of the CSF circulating space, and gravity is not our friend. Ventricular shunts drain CSF, but collapse our "normal" sized ventricles on the tubing, causing the tubing to become clogged, requiring it to be replaced. Cisternal shunts are great, they are at the top of the spinal collumn- so no over draining- and the space is large- so no collapsing and clogging. But the surgery is a brutal one! You lose almost all of your CSF, and it takes a long time to build it back up. And they have to move all of the muscles on the back of your neck over to get to the spinal canal, so you are left with extremely stiff and sore neck muscles, which takes a long time to go away. So the newest technique is simply a spin on ventricular shunting. They place a tube in each of your frontal ventricles, total of two, and hook them up to a single valve. This drains the same amount of fluid, but only half from each ventricle, thereby eliminating the collapse of the ventricle! So far this has been working well, this NS has been placing them for 5 years and has not had a single one fail! There are options out there! Do your research and bring it to your NS's attention!