Malignant Spinal Cord Compression: A 4-Year Retrospective Study

Abstract

Malignant spinal cord compression is defined as an extra or intradural lesion of the spinal cord, most often caused by bone metastases, which is responsible for medullary suffering. Our work is a retrospective study, spread over four years (January 2017- December 2020), on 16 cases of neoplastic spinal cord compression, treated in Moulay Ismail military hospital of Meknes. The average age of the patients was 62.69 years. A clear male predominance was observed with 81.25% of men. Also, 81.3% of patients had documented neoplasia at the time of diagnosis of spinal cord compression. The clinical presentation at admission was paraplegia in 18.8% of patients, paraparesis in 43.8%, and tetraparesis in 6.3%. Rachialgia was present in 83.3% of cases. The lesions were cervical in 6.25% of patients. The etiologies of spinal cord compression in our series were dominated by bone metastases secondary to prostate cancer, found in 50% of our cases. All patients received corticosteroid therapy and radiotherapy. 18.75% of the patients underwent laminectomy with spinal stabilization. The evolution was marked by a complete or partial recovery in 62.5% of our patients.