A case of spinal cord infarction following upper lobectomy of left lung for lung cancer

Spinal cord infarction is a rare postoperative complication. We report a case of spinal cord infarction diagnosed postoperatively. A 70-year-old man underwent left upper lobectomy for lung cancer under combined general and epidural anesthesia. An epidural infusion was used for intra-and postoperative analgesia. From 3 postoperative hours, the patient complained of right extremity and right hand paraplegia. It was thought that this was due to the influence of the epidural catheter, and we promptly discontinued the epidural infusion. On the next day, the paralysis worsened, and a wide-range spinal cord infarction in the region of the cervical and thoracic cord was diagnosed with magnetic resonance imaging on postoperative day 3. The cause of the spinal cord infarction was unclear. As the paralysis improved by conservative therapy, the patient was transferred from our hospital to a rehabilitation hospital on the 27th postoperative day.