Blood Supply and Vascular Pathology of the Spinal Cord

Abstract

The pathology of the spinal cord has for a long time been dominated by myelitis. Nowadays it is thought that many of the previously described “syndromes” are, in fact, vascular myelopathies. Three events have shed new light on spinal pathology:

• 1. Research into the blood supply and circulation of the central nervous system has not only recalled some long-standing and often neglected developments by Adamkiewicz (1882), Kadyi (1889), and Tanon (1910) but has also provided new details (Lazorthes, 1957, 1958, 1964; Corbin, 1961).

• 2. More systematic anatomic and clinical investigations of the pathologic spinal cord have also produced some very interesting observations (Ullman and Alajouanine, 1938; Zülch, 1954–1955; Lhermitte and Corbin, 1960; Garcin et al., 1963; Jellinger, 1966; Neumayer, 1967; Fazio, 1970).

• 3. New techniques of exploration and examination, especially angiography of the vessels of the spinal cord by selective injection, have placed the anatomic contributions in an appropriate clinical and surgical framework (Houdart et al., 1965; Di Chiro, 1967).