Disorders of the spinal cord and roots

The distinctive patterns of myelopathy (disorder of the spinal cord) and radiculopathy (disorder of spinal roots) are a direct consequence of the striking anatomy of the spinal cord: Having established that a patient's clinical presentation localises to the spinal cord and/or roots, clues to the pathological diagnosis emerge from the timing of the symptoms (table 1), as is usually the case in neurology. View this table: Table 1 Speed of onset and likely cause of myeloradiculopathy ### Spinal cord The relationships of the white matter tracts to one another and to the central grey matter are most easily appreciated in transverse section (figure 1). Within the major pathways, there is a relatively orderly somatotopic arrangement: Figure 1 Transverse section of the spinal cord in the mid-cervical region. Many ascending and descending tracts have …