Introduction: The purpose of this study is to quantify long term neurodegenerative changes along the cervical spinal cord rostral to a spinal cord injury (SCI) by means of volumetric analysis and determine its relationship with delayed neurologic deterioration.
Methods: Semi-automatic volumetric analysis of retrospectively collected cervical spine MRIs was performed among consecutive veterans who had cervical SCI with delayed clinical decline and follow up spine MRIs between 2012 and 2019. This was compared with the volumetric analysis of patients who had no clinical change.
Results: There were 29 veterans with progressive neurologic decline and 14 veterans without decline. Among patients with progressive neurologic decline, there was an average of 10.7% volume loss of the cervical spine per year over an average of 6.89 years. Those without neurologic decline also had volume loss of 38.8% over a period of 2.45 years. There was no significant difference in the change in volumes between the group of patients with neurologic decline and those without.
Conclusion : Neurodegeneration of the cervical spinal cord is may be evident remote from the time of SCI. This finding does not necessarily correlate with clinical decline.
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