Pitfalls in making the diagnosis of syringomyelia

An abstract of a study by Mauer et al performing an MRI study of the brain and the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine, with cardiac gated phase contrast cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow studies i.e the complete central nervous system and, in addition, a so-called myelography sequence and contrast study is presented. Results show that differential diagnosis of syringomyelia it is useful to perform a cardiac gated phase contrast CSF flow study and a myelography sequence. The contrast studies alone are not sufficient to exclude other disease processes.