Myelopathy symptoms may include: Pain in the lower back, neck, arm or leg. Tingling, numbness or weakness. Decreased fine motor skills, balance, and coordination.
Pain in your neck or back. Tingling, numbness or weakness in your arms, hands, legs or feet. Difficulty with fine motor skills, such as buttoning a shirt or grasping small objects. Balance or coordination issues.
Cervical myelopathy results from compression of the spinal cord in the neck (cervical area of the spine). Symptoms of cervical myelopathy may include problems with fine motor skills, pain or stiffness in the neck, loss of balance, and trouble walking.
Background: Patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) often present with atypical symptoms such as vertigo, headache, palpitations, tinnitus, blurred vision, memory loss, and abdominal discomfort.
Red flags particularly suggestive of cancer, infection, or inflammation are malaise, fever, unexplained weight loss, pain that is increasing, is unremitting, or disturbs sleep, a history of inflammatory arthritis, cancer, tuberculosis, immunosuppression, drug abuse, AIDS, or other infection.
DM may be painless, but most dogs with severe chronic pain will display no signs. Therefore, I have also seen cases of severe hip dysplasia, cruciate ligament rupture or arthritis get mistaken for DM. Degenerative myelopathy is described as a diagnosis by exclusion.
Differential Diagnosis
14 Disorders that often mimic and coexist with DM include degenerative lumbosacral syndrome, intervertebral disc disease, spinal cord neoplasia and degenerative joint diseases such as hip dysplasia or cranial cruciate ligament rupture.
Myelopathy describes any neurologic symptoms related to the spinal cord and is a serious condition. It occurs from spinal stenosis that causes pressure on the spinal cord. If untreated, this can lead to significant and permanent nerve damage including paralysis and death.
If the cervical stenosis with myelopathy progresses further and compresses the spinal cord, symptoms like incontinence, bladder and bowel movements and paralysis are seen in later stages. Remember, cervical myelopathy typically shows symptoms when your spinal cord is compressed by 30% at least.
Physical examination commonly elicits long tract signs such as spasticity, hyperreflexia, and abnormal reflexes such as Babinski or Hoffman's sign. The diagnosis is confirmed by the presence of significant spinal cord compression as demonstrated by MRI or CT myelogram.
Myelopathy is a nerve injury in your spinal cord, which is the grouping of nerves that runs from your skull to your tailbone. The condition is caused by compression of the spinal cord, resulting in pain, loss of sensation, or loss of control of certain body parts.
Preoperative MRI of a patient with cervical myelopathy shows compression of the spinal cord. At Mayo Clinic, patients with suspected cervical myelopathy have MRI to check for spinal cord compression.
As your vertebral disks wear away with time, your spinal cord can be put under increased pressure as the canal gets narrower from arthritis and disk protrusions. This compression can result in worsening neck pain and other symptoms. This condition is called cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM).
Age. Cervical spondylosis occurs commonly as part of aging. Occupation. Jobs that involve repetitive neck motions, awkward positioning or a lot of overhead work put extra stress on the neck.
It affects the fibers of the spinal cord that transmit impulses to the arms, hands, and legs. As a result, it can cause weakness, numbness, tingling, or rarely, pain in these areas.
But if you develop any of the following emergency signs, you should see a doctor immediately: Loss of bowel and/or bladder function. Worsening or disabling spine pain, such as in the neck, mid back, low back. Arm and/or leg weakness, pain, numbness, or tingling.
Pain, cramps, weakness or numbness in the arms, hands and legs. Paralysis. Poor coordination. Fatigue.
Cervical myelopathy is a disease where patients can develop balance problems impeding walking, a loss in manual dexterity as well as problems with bowel and bladder function. These symptoms can be accompanied by numbness, tingling and/or weakness in the arms and/or hands.
Progressive myelopathy can be a manifestation of a variety of disorders including progressive multiple sclerosis. However it is extremely uncommon for a single lesion to cause a progressive myelopathy in MS.
While the pathophysiology of multiple sclerosis (MS) and degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) differs—MS via an autoimmune process and DCM by a mechanical compressive process—both are characterized by damage to myelin and have overlapping presentations (Hurwitz, 2009; Young, 2000a; Ulmer et al., 1993; Nouri et al., ...
As cervical myelopathy presents with such a variety of symptoms associated with other conditions, it can often lead to a delay in diagnosis and, sometimes, misdiagnosis in primary care. For example, sciatica can mimic certain symptoms of cervical myelopathy in the lower limb.