Spinal cord embolism.

Vascular accidents involving the spinal cord, in contrast to the brain, are extremely rare. Damage to the spinal cord from verified emboli seems to be an even greater rarity and no examples were found by Blackwood (1958) in a series of 3,737 postmortem reports from the National Hospital, Queen Square, London. Embolic myelomalacia has been reported in bacterial endocarditis and other forms of heart disease such as mitral stenosis and coronary occlusion. When caisson disease and air embolism are excluded, the paucity of the literature on the subject indicates that spinal embolism is very uncommon, and in some reports confirmation of the emboli and the site of their impaction has been lacking. The purpose of this paper is to record two further examples of the syndrome and to present details of the nature and origin of the emboli and the lesions produced.