抄録
Subependymoma is usually intraventricular; only three cases of spinal cord subependymoma have been reported. The authors encountered a 57-year-old female with a cervical intramedullary subependymoma. The patient had been well until 1967, when she noted numbness in the left arm. Over the next 17 years, weakness of the left leg, numbness of both legs, and gait disturbance slowly progressed. Neurological examination on admission revealed tetraparesis, which was particularly severe on the left side, hyporeflexia of both triceps, hyper-reflexia of both legs, bilateral sensory disturbance below the C5 level, and spastic gait. Myelography and post-myelography computed tomography (CT) showed cord swelling from C5 to Th2 and intramedullary reflux of contrast medium. Contrast-enhanced CT showed marked intramedullary enhancement adjacent to a lowdensity area. Laminectomy was performed and the tumor, which was sharply demarcated and protruding into the cystic cavity, was totally removed. Pathological examination disclosed that it was a typical subependymoma. The postoperative course was uneventful and the symptoms abated. In this as in the three cases previously reported, the tumor was located in the cervical cord of a middleaged patient with a long history of clinical symptoms. The authors emphasize that subependymoma is a benign tumor occasionally found in the spinal cord and that it can be totally removed because of its sharp demarcation from normal tissue.
