Features of the Myelopathy in Patients with Electrical Burn

Nam, Kyeong Sik; Cha, Myung Jin; Kim, Min Ju; Oh, Mi Sun; Minn, Yang Ki; Cho, Soo Jin; Kwon, Ki Han

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Electrical injury can cause serious damage to any part of the nervous system. However spinal cord injury by electricity itself rarely develops. If develops, it can be either electrical myelopathy (immediate or delayed), spinal atrophic paralysis and/or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-like disease. We are going to report the clinical, electrophysiological and radiographic features of electrical myelopathy (immediate or delayed) of 18 patients.
METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the clinical, electrophysiological and radiographic data of patients who were diagnosed as electrical myelopathy.
RESULTS
Among 1,306 patients with electrical injury, 18 patients (1.4%) had electrical myelopathy. Fifteen patients (83%) had motor symptoms and 16 patients (89%) had sensory symptoms or signs. It is interesting for seven patients to appear their neurological symptoms or signs with a day after electrical injury. Somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) which were done in 17 patients showed abnormal central conduction defects in 12 patients (70.5%). Magnetic resonance images (MRI) of spinal cord, however, did not show any abnormalities in all the tested patients (15 patients).
CONCLUSIONS
Clinically, electrical myelopathy can cause not only motor but also sensory symptoms or signs. Interestingly, there were several immediate as well as delayed forms of electrical myelopathy In most patients with electrical myelopathy, SEP was a useful method to detect objective abnormalities but MRI was not.