Although hemorrhagic complications may arise with thrombolytic therapy using recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA), deterioration following administration of rt-PA for hemorrhagic disease is an iatrogenic complication. Caution has recently been raised regarding aortic dissection. A case of cervical epidural hematoma treated with rt-PA is reported herein. The patient was an 87-year-old woman with a history of hemodialysis, brainstem infarction, and stenosis of bilateral internal carotid arteries treated with ticlopidine. She was transferred to our hospital with severe occipital and neck pain. Diffusion-weighted imaging revealed patchy signal hyperintensity in the left cerebellar hemisphere. Right hemiparesis appeared 2 h later, but repeat magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed no new lesions. Administration of rt-PA was performed under a diagnosis of hyper-acute cerebral infarction. Irregular hemodialysis was initiated for pulmonary edema. Complete tetraplegia appeared after hemodialysis, 10 h after rt-PA administration. Repeat MRI revealed cervical epidural hematoma, and hematoma removal was performed. After 10 days, hemiparesis recovered to manual muscle testing (MMT) 2 in the left extremities but remained at MMT0 in the right extremities. Cervical epidural hematoma is a rare complication in stroke practice. Although rt-PA should be administered as soon as possible, since "time is brain," spending a few minutes on spinal MRI is preferable to prevent iatrogenic deterioration. For atypical cases of cerebral infarction, the possibility of cervical epidural hematoma should be considered.

Distal radius fracture is a common injury, especially in elderly people, and internal fixation with volar locking plate (VLP) is becoming an increasingly popular technique for the management of displaced and/or unstable distal radius fractures. One of the most common complications of this treatment is the flexor tendon rupture, mostly of the flexor pollicis longus (FPL). While the rupture of flexor digitorum tendons to the index (FDI) mostly occurs concomitantly with the rupture of FPL after the treatment using volar plating for distal radial fracture, sole rupture of the FDI without FPL rupture is very rare. Here, we report a case of the sole rupture of FDI after volar locking plating and analyze its pathogenesis indicating that the lift-up of the distal ulnar edge of the plate related to the malcorrection of the fracture site is the culprit for this specific complication.

No abstract