Temporary Relative Lumbar Spinal Stenosis After Skip Partial Laminectomies in an Elderly Woman: A Case Report

Lumbar spinal stenosis is common and mostly caused by age-related spine degeneration. When conservative treatment is not successful, surgery is typically performed. We encountered a 79-year-old female patient who developed spinal canal stenosis at an unoperated level after partial skip laminectomies at multiple lumbar levels. On postoperative day two, she developed paraparesis, and magnetic resonance imaging showed lumbar spinal canal stenosis at a level that was normal before surgery. Her paraparesis resolved two weeks after surgery. Repeat imaging at the three-month follow-up showed an improvement in the lumbar stenosis. We consider this phenomenon to be "negative pressure concentration in the dural canal" based on the Venturi effect and Bernoulli's principle.