Spinal Cord Pathologies - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. In this lesson, we're talking about pathologies of the spinal cord that we can visualize in sectional imaging. The first pathology we'll discuss is meningiomas. Meningiomas, you understand are benign tumors. These benign tumors grow from the meninges on the borders of the central nervous system. So meningiomas can occur anywhere in the central nervous system, including the spinal cord, but also the brain. So technically speaking, a meningioma is not necessarily a tumor of the spinal cord itself, but of the meninges growing and encapsulating the spinal cord. So here's a few examples of what meningiomas look like. In the sagittal MRI to the left, we can see a meningioma growing inside of the spinal canal. It's not actually growing inside of the spinal cord. It's growing outside of the spinal cord pressing on to the spinal cord because it's taking up space inside of that spinal canal or that vertebral canal. In the center image, this is another sagittal MRI