title: Acute inflammatory myelopathies.
abstract: Inflammatory injury to the spinal cord causes a well-recognized clinical syndrome. Patients typically develop bilateral weakness, usually involving the legs, although the arms may also become affected, in association with a pattern of sensory changes that suggests a spinal cord dermatomal level. Bowel and bladder impairment is also common in many patients. Recognition of the clinical pattern of spinal cord injury should lead clinicians to perform imaging studies to evaluate for compressive etiologies. MRI of the spine is particularly useful in helping visualize intraparenchymal lesions and when these lesions enhance following contrast administration a diagnosis of myelitis is made. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis can also confirm a diagnosis of myelitis when a leukocytosis is present. There are many causes of non-compressive spinal cord injury including infectious, parainfectious, toxic, nutritional, vascular, systemic as well as idiopathic inflammatory etiologies. This review focuses on inflammatory spinal cord injury and its relationships with multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and systemic collagen vascular and paraneoplastic diseases.
authors: Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, USA. Electronic address: bruce.cree@ucsf.edu.
authors: Bruce A C
authors: BA
authors: Cree
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000818:Animals; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000134:cerebrospinal fluid / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000276:immunology; D009187:Myelitis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D055502:Secondary Prevention
keywords: acute transverse myelitis; cerebrospinal fluid; inflammation; neuromyelitis optica; partial myelitis; pediatric transverse myelitis; progressive necrotic myelopathy