Interactive Transcript
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This was a one day old infant
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who had an abnormal skin discoloration overlying the sacrum.
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And so this patient came to screening spine ultrasound.
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Uh, we're starting at the sacrum
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where the tech has labeled the S five vertebral body,
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and we agree with that labeling because this is a square
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or rectangular shape of the S five vertebral body.
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Um, coming superiorly, uh, they've labeled this L five,
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but let's see what else we can see.
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Um, so coming superiorly, there's, uh, it's hard to tell
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where we are because there's some,
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there's a lot of abnormalities here.
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So they've labeled this the L five vertebral body,
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but there's some something abnormal going on in this
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central spinal canal.
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So if we agree with their labeling, L one, L two, L three,
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L four, L five, this will be S one.
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This, uh, conus mellis does have a nice normal triangular
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shape, but it extends to the inferior aspect
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of the L three vertebral body level.
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So we, if we agree with the labeling
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of the vertebral body levels,
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this will be the L five vertebral body,
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L four vertebral body level.
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So that means this is the L three vertebral body level.
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And although this conus mellis has a nice normal triangular
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shaped, uh, morphology, it extends beyond the mid portion
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of the L three vertebral body level.
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So this is too low,
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but there's some other abnormalities on this image.
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I want to draw your attention to.
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Number one, we're have a decreased amount
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of CSF in this central, uh, spinal canal.
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So, um, you know,
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typically they're CSF extending all the way from the, uh,
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the ventral and, uh, ventral
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and dorsal, uh, uh, central, uh, spinal canal space.
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There's this abnormal agen material at the ventral aspect
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of this spinal canal.
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Um, and I'm having a hard time seeing
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where is phylum terminality, where are nerve rootlets?
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Um, like what else is going on here?
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I think this is the phylum terminality here,
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and it looks a little bit too thick to me.
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In addition to this abnormal genic material in this, um,
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spinal canal concerning for a fat.
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This is what you, what this is what a,
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a motion degraded logic view looks like.
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So this patient moved, which, uh,
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when we went from the thoracic spine level
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to the lumbar spine level, so let's see if we repeated it.
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We did. So let's confirm the vertebral body levels.
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So we'll draw a line, uh, paralleling the sacrum,
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a line paralleling the lumbar, uh, vertebral bodies.
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And so this will be five one.
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And again, we're, we're,
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we have a low line conus mellis here, um,
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in the transverse plane.
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Let's just make sure we don't see anything else wrong in the
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paraspinal regions.
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Both of the kidneys have normal genicity.
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I don't see any hydro necrosis.
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The cord itself looks okay as we're going superior
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to inferior, but again,
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we have abnormal echogenic material here.
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It looks like it's, there's abnormal epigenic material in
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the dorsal aspect of the central, uh, spinal canal.
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Two, definitely abnormal, uh,
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genic material at the dorsal
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Aspect of this, um, central cord.
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Um, and, uh, it's important to label any areas
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of cutaneous abnormalities.
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So we can see if there's any sort
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of underlying like lesion extending from the surface
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of the skin into the central spinal canal.
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And it looks like, it looks like this is, uh, a,
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a tethered cord related to, um, that abnormal kind
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of fatty mass dorsally, so abnormal fat dorsally.
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And in the subcutaneous fat underlying the area
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of skin discoloration.
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Here it is in the transverse plane.
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We see it much better on, on these images than earlier.
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So there's, there's that abnormal epigenic, um, mass.
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So we're gonna recommend an MRI to be able
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to get more detail of what's going on, um,
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in this canal in the, uh, subcutaneous soft tissues,
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and, uh, confirm what level the cord ends at.
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So this patient later went on to MRI
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to confirm the abnormalities we saw at ultrasound.
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So on the left we have a T two non-fat saturated, uh,
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MRI of the lumbosacral junction.
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And on the right we have the corresponding T one weighted
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imaging without fat saturation.
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And this is a nice comparison at MRI to that ultrasound.
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You see this abnormal T one weighted hyperintensity, um,
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kind of follows the signal of the subcutaneous fat.
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And so this is, uh, an example
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of a closed dis di closed DYS raffic defect
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where you have a, uh, a fatty mass within the, uh, central
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canal extending from, it's hard to tell exactly
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where the cutaneous abnormality is,
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but there is some prominent subcutaneous fat in this infant.
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So let's label the levels of the lumbar spine.
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Of course, if we're gonna on a localizer image,
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include the entirety of the spine to be able
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to accurately label.
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But this looks like L five, L four,
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and this, this conus mellis terminates at the inferior
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aspect of L three, which is too low.
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So concerning for tethered cord related to this intradural,
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um, uh, fatty mass, uh, with this like, uh, kind of subtle,
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um, there's maybe some subtle extension
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of this fatty mass towards the dorsal surface of the skin.
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So, uh, abnormal spine MRI, uh,
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confirming the abnormalities we saw at spine ultrasound.