Patients who present with cervical myelopathy, in the context of multiple sclerosis, may have overlapping symptoms that result from or are accentuated by both conditions. In fact, I recently had such a patient in my office and the question arose as to what is the impact of surgical intervention and the prognosis for meaningful recovery among individuals with concurrent multiple sclerosis and cervical myelopathy. Unfortunately this data is not well known.

A recent article by Daniel Lubelski and associates published in The Spine Journal discussed just this problem. They followed 48 patients over a 15-year period and unfortunately the majority of patients who had surgery demonstrated no significant improvement in a variety of long-term scores.

Dr. Neubardt and I discussed this issue and it is our goal to better understand the occasional patient who has cervical myelopathy with both these diagnoses in the hopes of helping patients improve their symptoms.

You can learn more about cervical myelopathy by watching our video on www.cervicalherniateddisc.com.

Jack Stern, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S.