Cervical Myelopathy

Abstract

A brief review of the discovery and development of our present-day concept of the complex “cervical myelopathy” would seem justified, since, among other things, it throws some light on the background of the unaltered current interest of the discussions about the actual pathological mechanisms of this disease of the spinal cord. The birth of this “new” disease of cervical myelopathy at the beginning of the nineteen-fifties, was not free from labour pains. In the initial period, neurology did not find it easy to come to terms with the concept of a bio-mechanical pathogenesis for classical neurological clinical pictures, and many a neurologist accepted this new knowledge only after a great deal of hesitation. After all, the discovery of the aetiological-pathogenetic principle of spondylogenic myelopathy represented a somewhat revolutionary break with the formerly apparently unshakable concept of an inflammatory or primarily degenerative pathogenesis of this spinal-neurological syndrome, which was now to be replaced by the concept of a mechanical causal complex.

“This is one more condition which has been taken out of the scrap basket into which we used to put multiple sclerosis or spinal degenerative disease”. (GILBERT HORRAX, 1954)