PURPOSE To examine the clinical and radiographic findings in a large group of patients having or suspected of having a spinal dural arteriovenous fistula. METHODS An analysis of 240 spinal angiograms in 132 patients revealed 97 vascular malformations that included 66 spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas. Sixteen patients had 1 or more normal spinal angiograms that were performed for suspected ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas are commonly missed on imaging or misdiagnosed as inflammatory or neoplastic processes. We reviewed a consecutive series of spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas referred to our institution that were missed or misdiagnosed on initial imaging and studied the clinical consequences of missing or misdiagnosing the lesion. MATERIALS AND METH...

BACKGROUND Various types of lumbar dural punctures may contribute to neurological injury. The etiologies of dural injury include; inadvertent dural punctures due to epidurals placed for labor anesthesia, epidural steroid injections (ESI/transforaminal TESI; approximately 9 million ESI performed in the US per year), deliberate placement of intradural pain devices, and spontaneous cerebrospinal f...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE If venous congestion is the primary cause of pituitary gland enlargement in cases of dural arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs), other abnormal pituitary findings may be detectable on MR images. We sought to investigate the perfusion abnormality of the pituitary gland secondary to dural AVFs in the cavernous sinus and to clarify its clinical importance. METHODS Nine consecutiv...

Spinal dural arteriovenous fistula is a rare vascular lesion of the spinal cord associated with progressive myelopathy. Symptoms include progressive gait dysfunction, weakness, sensory loss, and bowel and bladder dysfunction. Because these symptoms overlap with other common causes of myelopathy and the disease is rare, spinal dural arteriovenous fistula is often not suspected and the time to di...

A six-year-old Ragdoll cat underwent examination due to a six-month history of slowly progressive gait abnormalities. The cat presented with an ambulatory tetraparesis with a neurological examination indicating a C1-T2 myelopathy. Radiographs of the spine showed a radiopaque irregular line ventrally in the vertebral canal dorsal to vertebral bodies C3-C5. In this area, magnetic resonance imagin...

Spinal anaesthesia developed in the late 1800s with the work of Wynter, Quincke and Corning. However, it was the German surgeon, Karl August Bier in 1898, who probably gave the first spinal anaesthetic. Bier also gained first-hand experience of the disabling headache related to dural puncture. He correctly surmised that the headache was related to excessive loss of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In...

Iatrogenic arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is an unusual and potentially fatal complication of lumbar spinal surgery. The presentation of these injuries is usually late, with symptoms such as leg swelling or cardiac failure. It is crucial to suspect AVF in the patient which presents to emergency with lumbar spinal surgery history. The diagnosis is often based on imaging studies such as computed tom...

OBJECTIVES Sheep are frequently used as animal models in experimental spinal injury studies. Therefore, extensive knowledge of ovine spinal dimensions is essential for experimental design and interpretation of results obtained in these trials. This study aimed to obtain quantitative morphometrical data of the thoracolumbar dural sac in sheep and determine the anatomical relationship between the...