Cavernous angiomas are rare vascular lesions, most occurring supratentorially, with spinal cavernomas being even rarer. They have a varied magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appearance which is usually not diagnostic. A 42-year-old man presented with progressive low backache for the past 5 years and was found to have a mild right ankle weakness. MRI showed an intradural extramedullary lesion at the L1 vertebral body level. Intraoperatively, a dark reddish-blue mulberry-like lesion was found attached to a nerve root that had to be sacrificed during the excision. Histopathology confirmed that it was a cavernous angioma and the patient had no added deficits postoperatively. Cauda equina cavernomas are extremely rare and hence not thought of as a differential preoperatively. They are relatively simple to remove but will mostly need the sacrifice of the adherent nerve root. Most cases do well postoperatively with stable deficits and some improving.
Keywords cauda equina - spinal cavernoma - vascular lesions© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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