15. Diseases of the spinal cord

The causes of myelopathy are many and various. The damage to the spinal cord may be complete (as in the case of a complete spinal cord injury) but it is more often incomplete (as in the case of an incomplete traumatic spinal cord injury and most types of myelopathy due to non-traumatic causes). There are some classic spinal cord syndromes, but in practice they do not generally display classic symptomatology. In practice, information from the history-taking combined with examination of the main tract systems enables the height of the damage to be localized and a differential diagnosis to be formulated.