-
Case Reports
Cauda Equina Syndrome After Spinal Epidural Steroid Injection Into an Unrecognized Paraganglioma.
- Stylianos Pikis, José E Cohen, John M Gomori, Yakov Fellig, Chrysostomos Chrysostomou, Yair Barzilay, Eyal Itshayek, and Amir Hasharoni.
- Departments of *Neurosurgery †Radiology ‡Pathology §Anesthesiology ∥Orthopedic Surgery, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel.
- Clin J Pain. 2013 Dec 1;29(12):e39-41.
ObjectiveClinically significant spinal hemorrhage is an extremely rare but potentially devastating complication of spinal epidural steroid injection. We report a rare case of cauda equina syndrome after spinal epidural injection that inadvertently penetrated an unrecognized spinal paraganglioma.MethodsThe clinical records for a patient presenting with cauda equina syndrome were retrospectively reviewed. A literature search was performed to identify reports of cauda equina syndrome in patients undergoing spinal epidural steroid injection, as well as recent large series describing complications associated with these injections.Case ReportA 37-year-old man presented to our emergency department with severe low back pain radiating bilaterally to the lower extremities and urinary incontinence. His pain had greatly intensified 1 day after spinal epidural steroid injection. He had a 1-year history of low back pain diagnosed as disk herniation and managed conservatively but had experienced recent onset of a similar pain and new onset of nocturnal back pain causing sleep disturbance. Epidural injection had been administered based on the earlier diagnosis of disk herniation. Examination using magnetic resonance imaging revealed a previously unrecognized oval hemorrhagic mass lesion at L2-3, which had been inadvertently penetrated during epidural injection. Emergent en bloc resection resolved the patient's neurological symptoms. At histopathologic analysis, the tumor was diagnosed as a spinal paraganglioma.DiscussionThe presented case indicates the importance of a thorough history, physical examination, and imaging assessment before spinal epidural steroid injection.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.