After Surgical Removal of a Tumor from the Thoracic Spinal Cord due Gait Instability to Sensory Impairment of the Right Lower Limb: A Case Report

We report the case of a patient who had a spinal cord tumor removed, resulting in unstable gait. The unstable motion occurred during the right swing phase of walking, and started from the right mid-stance phase. Input from deep sensory receptors was impaired because of the intramedullary tumor of the thoracic spinal cord (Th10). We considered that the cause of the unstable gait was enlargement of the joint position sense of the right leg. In order to improve the patient's unstable gait, we performed physical therapy focusing on the muscle spindles of the right lower limb. Through physical therapy, the patient's unstable gait became more stable, and the sensory disorder of the right lower limb improved despite a general assessment of no change in sensory ability. In this case, focusing on high muscle spindle activity may have led to a good result. We believe that motion training is effective as it uses the conserved deep sensory mechanisms. Physical therapy for sensory impairment should be considered depending on the characteristics of sensory receptors.