Article


outcome of an adult admitted to our hospital af- ter a minor head trauma with the clinical picture of chronic spinal canal stenosis. He had a cervi- cal spinal cord infarction about 12 hours after admission. In retrospect, there were no alarming symptoms or signs that would have prompted us to suspect this imminent danger during his hos- pital stay. This case report highlights the com- plexity of spinal cord hemodynamics, especially when new acute injury is superimposed on a chronic pathological spinal cord condition. No diagnostic technique allows continuous moni- toring of blood flow in different spinal cord regions. Therefore, it is impossible to envision any real-time therapeutic intervention. Meticu- lous maintenance of physiological MABP in the post-traumatic period remains the only preven- tive measure for avoiding delayed spinal cord infarction in these patients17


. Abbreviations


MABP: mean arterial blood pressure; SCBF: spi- nal cord blood flow.


Consent We


attempted to obtain written informed


consent for the deceased patient presented in the case report by trying to locate immediate family members. No valid contact informa- tion was available for living family members. Therefore, written informed consent could not be obtained from the patient’s next of kin de-


spite all reasonable attempts. The authors have taken careful effort to ensure that no patient- identifying information was placed within this manuscript.


Competing interests


The authors declare that they have no competing interests.


Authors’ contributions


VB and MZ analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the relationship between acute de- cline in SCBF, chronic cervical spondylotic my- elopathy, and spinal cord infarction. LEW per- formed the histological examination. J-LC was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.


Figure 2 . Gross view of the anterior spinal cord in the cervical and thoracic spinal canal. On the right side, a normal-appearing spinal cord is localised in the mid-thoracic region. To the left, the cranial portion of the spinal cord is localised from the mid-thoracic to the upper cervical region. A loss of normal structure and complete disintegration of the spinal cord on the left side of the picture indicate necrosis in the upper thoracic and entire cervical spinal cord.


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