Dissociation of neurological deficits in spinal decompression illness.

Functional differentiation is found in the spinal cord. A unique set of neurological deficits follows a multi-focal injury. Clinically, sensory and motor disturbance present independently, often resulting in sensory and motor deficit dissociation. This study examined 103 spinal decompression illness (DCI) cases. The neurological deficit dissociation was classified as follows: 1) Cases with sensory impairment only, or motor dysfunction alone, were tagged as having "dissociation" (44 cases); when a case was with both sensory and motor dysfunction, the spinal level of the sensory impairment was determined and was matched with the spinal segments responsible for the motor dysfunction; 2) If the two spinal areas did not match (i.e. with no regional overlap), they were tagged as having "dissociation" for each motor dysfunction (32 cases). In total, dissociation was present in 76 out of 103 cases. We concluded that clinical neurological deficit dissociation is frequently observed in spinal DCI.