Typical anterior spinal artery syndrome with initially severe pain and paraplegia with sensory disturbances occurred after a fall in a 36-year-old man with a history of lumbago. Multiple emboli of fibrocartilaginous material with nucleus pulposus cells were found in the foci of myelomalacia. The embolism of nucleus pulposus tissue originating from Schmorl's nodules was probably carried via the blood vessels of the neighbouring vertebral bodies with retrograde flow through the perispinal venous plexus into spinal cord veins and hence into the arteries of the spinal cord via veno-arterial anastomoses. A transitory increase in intra-abdominal pressure was probably the cause of the inversion of venous flow.

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Out of a group of patients suffering from a spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage 27 patients were checked by computer-assisted tomography (CAT), 23 patients by radioisotope cisternography, and 21 patients by both diagnostic procedures. The results were correlated with the clinical observations. The flow of the CSF was normal in 7 patients (30.43%), and pathological in 16 patients (69.56%). Of the 27 patients checked by CAT, 23 (85.18%) showed a ventricular dilatation, which in 17 patients (62.96%) was not connected with a corresponding increase of the cisterns of the convexity. The clinical symptoms of hydrocephalus, the degree of impairment of the circulation of the CSF determined by radioisotope cisternography and the ventricular diameter as determined by CAT correlated well.

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