A 45-year-old woman in Belgium came to an emergency department with a sudden headache at the back of her head that started right after she strained. A brain CT scan then turned up something few people would connect with such an ordinary effort: a small pocket of air inside her skull.
The case, published Sept. 15 in the American Journal of Case Reports, describes pneumocephalus, the medical term for air in the cranial cavity, after a Valsalva maneuver. That is the familiar move of bearing down against a closed airway, the kind of effort people make when lifting something heavy, straining on the toilet or trying to pop their ears.
