You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
CASE REPORT
“I am not delusional!” Sensory dysaesthesia secondary to degenerative cervical myelopathy
  1. Oliver Daniel Mowforth1,
  2. Benjamin Marshall Davies1 and
  3. Mark Reinhard Kotter1,2
  1. 1 Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  2. 2 Anne McLaren Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine, Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mark Reinhard Kotter, mrk25{at}cam.ac.uk

Abstract

Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is the most common cause of adult spinal cord dysfunction, most classically presenting with a broad-based gait and clumsy hands. Limb sensory loss and paraesthesia are considered common symptoms of DCM. However, we report an unusual case of a patient presenting with prominent and atypical sensory symptoms. The patient repeatedly presented to accident and emergency complaining of her body resembling a wet gel-like substance that she attributed to the use of olive oil moisturising cream. The patient was found to have myelopathic signs on examination and MRI consistent with severe cervical myelopathy. She subsequently underwent successful decompressive anterior cervical discectomy, as recommended by international guidelines. This case serves to remind health professionals of uncommon presentations of common disease and the importance of maintaining a wide initial differential diagnosis.

  • spinal cord
  • pain (neurology)
  • neurology
  • neurological injury

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-229033

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors ODM, BMD and MRK were involved in conception, planning and design of the manuscript; were involved in redrafting the manuscript, data analysis and interpretation of the data; approved submission of the final version of the manuscript. ODM wrote the first draft and acquired the data presented in the manuscript from electronic hospital records.

    • Funding Research in the senior author’s laboratory is supported by a core support grant from the Wellcome Trust and MRC to the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. MRNK is supported by a NIHR Clinician Scientist Award. This report is independent research arising from a Clinician Scientist Award (CS-2015-15-023) supported by the National Institute for Health Research. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.

    • Competing interests MRN reports grants from National Institute of Health Research, travel cost grant from AOSpine and is founder and trustee of Myelopathy.org, the first charity dedicated to degenerative cervical myelopathy.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Patient consent for publication Obtained.