Highlights
Lower back pain and radiculopathy are demonstrated in up to 85% of patients by a lumbar disc herniation.
No clear consensus has been made regarding classification by measurement of the actual herniated content.
The patient's lumbar disc herniation classifies as an extruded disc.
MIS is the preferred approach for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation regarding the size.
Background:
Chordomas are malignant tumors that arise from the remnants of the notochord. Complete en bloc radical resection with postoperative radiation therapy is currently considered the gold standard. Here, we performed a 360-staged approach to manage a C3-C4 chordoma that involved the right vertebral artery.
Case Description:
A 40-year-old woman presented with a C3-C4 chordoma that invaded the right vertebral artery. She responded well to a circumferential approach including resection and stabilization.
Conclusion:
A 40-year-old woman with a C3-C4 spinal chordoma was optimally managed with a combined anterior/posterior surgical approach including decompression/fusion.
Background:
Before the introduction of high-resolution MR, few disc fragments were misdiagnosed as meningiomas.
Case Description:
A 63-year-old female presented with a 6-month history of mild to moderate pain in the left arm, weakness 4/5 in the left arm C5-C6 distribution, and a loss of the left biceps reflex response. Although the MR study was read as showing a C5-C6 level probable spinal meningioma, this proved to be a sequestrated disc fragment at surgery.
Conclusion:
Rarely, cervical disc herniations may be misdiagnosed on MR studies as spinal meningiomas.
Introduction
Subarachnoid Hemorrhage (SAH) is caused by an aneurysmatic origin in 80% of cases. In the adult population, the risk of shunt dysfunction is about 16% in the first year, with proximal mechanical obstruction being the most frequent cause.
Case report
An 81-year-old man with a history of shunt system placement presented among clinical data of shunt dysfunction. The brain Computed Tomography (CT) showed dilation of the ventricular system, with no other associated injury. The cause of the dysfunction was a SAH determined by a lumbar puncture (LP) study. We performed an angiography reporting 3 aneurysms.
Discussion
The risk of shunt dysfunction at one year is 40% and at two years, the risk ups to 53% with obstruction of the system and infection being the two principal causes. The usefulness of a lumbar puncture for late detection of SAH lies in the red cells in the Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF). When the CT is negative and the clinical suspicion remains, the lumbar puncture (LP) continues with higher sensitivity despite is over 12 hours of the onset clinic symptoms.
Conclusion
This case encourages to follow a rigorous protocol study for patients with multiple shunt dysfunction and chronic hydrocephalus. Also, this case invites to consider a hidden SAH secondary to a vascular pathology as a differential diagnosis for a multiple shunt dysfunction.
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