Jornal de Coluna e Neurocirurgia

Myelopathy’s Worsening Due to Adjacent Peroperative Discal Herniatio: Case Report.

Paul ROBLOT1*, Cecile ROSCOP2, Jean-Marc VITAL2, Olivier GILLE2 and Kaissar FARA3  

We report the case of a 62-old patient who suffered from immediate post-operative cervical spondylotic myelopathy’s worsening. This is a rare complication due to patient positioning the most often. This case seems to be the first case due to a disk herniation described to the best of our knowledge. This patient was operated by C4 and C5 corpectomy because of a spinal cord compression associated with intra-medullary T2-weighted hyper signal. Neurological worsening with immediate motor deficit was noted in postoperative care unit. An immediate cervical spine MRI scan was done showing a discal fragment at C6-C7 level. Emergency surgery was so performed with a C6-C7 transdiscal way for resection of a compressive cervical herniation. During the immediate postoperative outcome, the neurological enhancing was subtotal. We think that emergency MRI scan is mandatory for immediate postoperative neuroworsening after anterior cervical spine surgery instead of emergency surgery if neuroworsening is not tetraplegia in order to avoid a diagnosis misunderstanding.