CASE REPORT   Free access

Europa Medicophysica 2000 June;35(2):85-90

Copyright © 2000 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Tetraplegia secondary to a cervical epidural abscess as a rare complication of infected hip prothesis. A case report

Nardozi C. *, Santilli V. *, Pilati C. *, Foti G. *, Iachetti M., Finucci S. **, Coco V. ***, Di Biagio C. °

Radiology Unit, CTO Hospital, ASL RM/C; ** Specialty in PM&R, Tor Vergata University, Rome; *** Clinic for Orthopaedics, University of Catania; ° Specialty in PM&R, La Sapienza University, Rome; * Spinal Cord Unit, Hospital CTO, Rome, Italy

The treat­ment of an epi­du­ral ­abscess is gen­er­al­ly ­both sur­gi­cal and med­i­cal. In ­some ­patients, how­ev­er, ­there may be indi­ca­tions for an exclu­sive­ly phar­mac­o­log­i­cal ­approach. It is ­always nec­es­sary how­ev­er to mon­i­tor the clin­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the con­di­tion ­with the ­utmost ­care, and to ­ensure pos­sibil­ity of inter­ven­ing sur­gi­cal­ly as ­soon as the ­need aris­es. This ­paper ­describes a 72-­year-old ­male ­patient ­with pre­dis­pos­ing fac­tors, who devel­oped tet­ra­ple­gia ­from a cer­vi­cal epi­du­ral ­abscess sec­on­dary to hem­a­tog­e­nous bac­te­ri­al dif­fu­sion ­from an infect­ed hip replace­ment. The ­prompt acqui­si­tion of ­sound bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal ­data, cou­pled ­with rig­or­ous sur­veil­lance of the ­patient’s clin­i­cal ­progress, con­sent­ed a med­i­cal ­approach to treat­ing ­this pathol­o­gy ­with ­good ther­a­peu­tic ­results.