Korean J Spine.  2013 Dec;10(4):261-263. 10.14245/kjs.2013.10.4.261.

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Presenting as a Claudication

• Son SH
• Chung SW
• Kim KT
• Cho DC

• KMID: 1916611
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.14245/kjs.2013.10.4.261

Abstract

Back pain and radiating pain to the legs are the most common symptoms encountered in routine neurosurgical practice and usually originates from neurogenic causes including spinal stenosis. The clinial symptoms are often confused with symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, musculo-skeletal disease and vascular disease in elderly patients. Because it is not easy to distinguish out the cause of symptoms by only physical examination, routine spinal MRI is checked first to rule out the spinal diseases in most outpatient clinics. Although it is obvious that spinal MRI is a very strong tool to investigate the spinal circumferences, most spine surgeons ignore the importance of looking at all aspects of their imaging and of remembering the extra-spinal causes of radiculopathy. A 68-year-old man who presented with a sudden aggravated both leg claudication. Although his symptom was mimicked for his long standing neurogenic claudication due to spinal stenosis diagnosed previously, abdominal aortic aneurysm(AAA) was found on routine lumbar MRI and it was repaired successfully. We emphasize to spinal surgeons the importance of remembering to look wider on routine MRI images when considering differential diagnoses in the outpatient clinic and to remember the extra-spinal causes of radiculopathy, especially when encountering in elderly patients.

Keyword

Claudication; Abdominal aortic aneurysm

MeSH Terms

Aged
Ambulatory Care Facilities
Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal*
Back Pain
Diagnosis, Differential
Humans
Leg
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Peripheral Nervous System Diseases
Physical Examination
Radiculopathy
Spinal Diseases
Spinal Stenosis
Spine
Vascular Diseases