A 24-year-old female with haemoglobin E-thalassaemia who presented with paraparesis of 18 months' duration was found to have spinal extradural extramedullary haemopoietic tissue extending from T4 to T9. Complete neurological recovery followed laminectomy. The importance of prompt diagnosis and treatment, of this unusual complication of extramedullary haemopoiesis, before the spinal cord is irre...

A neurilemmoma presented as an expanding lesion of the bodies of C6 and C7 vertebrae and caused local neurological signs together with a spastic paraparesis. This tumour was treated by preliminary posterior fusion, followed by its complete removal via an anterior approach and stabilization by anterior spinal fusion. Other cases in the literature are reviewed and discussed.

Introduction The discovery in 1980 of the first human retrovirus (1), the human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-I), inaugurated a new era in human pathology. Two conditions were promptly associated with this retroviral infection (2): adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) and tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP). Thus, this discovery solved a longlasting enigma in tropical medicine, the cause of...

Introduction Postoperative paraplegia including paraparesis is a devastating complication after descending thoracic aortic aneurysm (DTAA) and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm (TAAA) repair surgery. This lecture will be focused on the pathophysiological mechanisms for the development of postoperative paraplegia, the strategies to prevent the development of postoperative paraplegia, and anesthet...

Gout rarely compresses the thoracic spinal cord. A 43-year-old man presented with lower limb paraparesis. MRI showed a soft tissue swelling at the level of T10/T11. He was managed with a laminectomy and evacuation of a presumed abscess and started on intravenous antibiotics. However, histology confirmed tophaceous gout.

A 60-year-old woman transferred with suspected cauda equina syndrome lacked lower extremity pulses on arrival. She rapidly developed visceral malperfusion due to underlying type B aortic dissection, necessitating aortic fenestration with thrombectomy. Despite misdiagnosis and delayed treatment, she could ambulate 1 year postoperatively. Aortic dissection remains integral to the differential dia...

An unusual form of hereditary spastic paraplegia is described. Affected females have a late-onset slowly progressive spastic paraparesis. Affected males show oligophrenia with a rapidly progressive spastic quadriplegia. The mode of inheritance is consistent with sex-linkage, with partial manifestation in female carriers.

We reviewed the historical, clinical and etiological aspects of the progressive chronic spastic myelopathies of unknown etiology, disserting on the clinical similarities between HTLV-I seropositive and seronegative tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP), as well as focusing on the PCR studies of the seronegative TSP.

In order to evaluate if there is variation on the intensity of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) response during HTLV-I associated tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP) evolution we retrospectively reviewed 128 cases. The results indicate that although CSF inflammatory alterations can persist over a 10-year period, they tend to become slight or even absent after the second year of TSP evolution.