Journal de la colonne vertébrale

Myelopathy in Pregnant Women: A Case of Acute Transverse Myelitis at Fann Department of Neurology in Dakar (Senegal)

Abstract

Boubacar S, Touré K, Adji DB, Ngor NS, Maiga Y, Ndiaye M, Diop AG and Ndiaye MM

Acute Transverse myelitis during pregnancy is rare and is life-threatening for parturient women and their pregnancies. We report a case of young Senegalese parturient woman.

This is a patient old 20 years, 1 pregnancy, 1 parity, with a history of asthma and gestational hypertension, who presented motor deficit of 04 members with progressive installation on twenty days during a pregnancy to term (9 months) from where achieving a scheduled caesarean during labour that allowed the extraction of a girl with no abnormalities. Then the patient was sent to our neurology’s department of Fann Hospital in Dakar where she was hospitalized for suitable care. The diagnosis of acute transverse myelitis was retained on clinical evidence of a spinal interruption syndrome confirmed by Para clinical investigations. The spinal MRI showed extensive hyper intense signal from C4 to C6. An inflammatory syndrome with CRP at 108 mg and a high CSF protein at 2.07 g/l. The patient had received corticosteroids and physical rehabilitation followed by a favourable outcome. The tetraplegia during pregnancy are rare and compromise progression of the latter hence the need to look for spinal suffering signs to objectify etiology which appropriate management depends on.