Epidemiological Data, Clinical Signs, Therapy and Outcome Evaluation in Dogs with Syringomyelia of Different Etiology

Syringomyelia detected in both animals and humans may cause a variable degree of discomfort and its etiology is commonly unidentified. The aim of this study was to compare the outcome in dogs with those having syringomyelia of different etiology. Dogs with syringomyelia were subdivided into two groups: syringomyelia associated with Chiari-like malformation (S-CLM) (15 dogs) and syringomyelia of other etiology (SOA) (15 dogs). Age onset of S-CLM clinical signs was earlier compared to SOA (mean S-CLM and SOA values: 50.53 and 97.6 months, respectively, p = 0.021). Two neurological dysfunction scoring systems alongside nociception values were lower in SOA compared to S-CLM (mean values for neurological dysfunction scoring system SOA and S-CLM: 5.87 and 4.2, respectively, p = 0.032) (mean values for nociception SOA and S-CLM: 20.97 and 10.03, respectively, p = 0.03). Symptomatic therapy included combinations of corticosteroids, gabapentin (10/15, 66.6%) in S-CLM and NSAID +/- gabapentin (8/15, 53.3% and 9/15, 60%, respectively) in SOA dogs. Eight S-CLM dogs (53.4%) improved with symptomatic therapy and eleven were still alive; however, most SOA dogs (9/15, 73.4%) died/were euthanized by the end of this study. SOA dogs demonstrated more severe neurological signs compared to S-CLM, although the outcome between the two groups was not associated (p = 0.211).