Medullary emergency

32 patients with symptoms and signs of medullary compression were submitted as emergencies to clinical and radiological examination in our hospital during a 5-year period. None of the patients was able to walk on admission. 27 emergency operations were performed to relieve medullary compression. If a single lesion in plain radiographs was well correlated with clinical symptoms and signs, the myelogram did not reveal crucial information. Young patients--aged 29 years or less--or patients with moderate symptoms on admission usually regained their ability to walk; as well as patients with a negative myelogram. On the other hand, old patients--aged 60 years or more--were only exceptionally able to walk later on. Other unfavourable signs were: a lesion of the thoracic spine, a total block in the myelogram, and a metastatic lesion. Our results of an emergency treatment were not better than the results of unhurried series reported in the literature.