Hi everyone,
I’m wondering if anyone can help me understand my neuro’s letter after mri on brain and cervical spine. I should explain that i’m having huge trouble at the moment with understanding fairly simple things which is upsetting me.
My g.p received my results via fax. He told me i had partial brain atrophy caused by what appears to be lack of blood flow to that area of brain. Does this mean that i’ve had a stroke? My memory is awful but what is really frightening me is that recently when people talk to me sometimes i can’t understand them…as if they’re talking a foreign language. I have frequent numbness, pressure feeling up the left side of my head and headaches/migraine. Alos when this happens i feel lightheaded and ‘spaced out’.
He said i have a lesion on my cervical spine but only a small one so nothing to worry about. I also have spondylosis and disc protrusion and a lump in my neck which needs investigating.
When i recieved a copy of the letter it reads,
There is not convincing evidence of demylination on the brain images. Her cervical spine shows disc protrusion at levels c6/7 and lesser at c5/6 possibly in contact with right c7 root, however there is corresponding clinical symptomatology. spinal cord outlines normally and there is no sign of demylination.
what does corresponding clinical symptomatoly actually mean? is it what she can see or is it the symptoms ive told her.
Also she says that spinal cord outlines normally…i only had mri of brain and cervical spine so does that mean she can tell the whole of my spinal cord is ok.
Any answer appreciated, thanks
I should add the g.p. told me the results from radiologist report and the the letter ive written out is from the neuro
Hi,
I’m no expert on this, but he’s clearly saying MS is NOT the suspect, at the moment - “no convincing evidence of demyelination”.
“Brain atrophy” to me suggests a slower process than stroke - as if it could have been short of oxygen for some time, rather than a sudden event. However, I might be reading too much into this - it could also be referring to a stroke, I think.
I wonder if you (or he) may have missed a word out from part of the letter. Does he write: “however there is corresponding clinical symptomatology”, or “there is NO corresponding clinical symptomatology”?
To me, it would make more sense if it read the latter, as he appears to be explaining why the disc protrusions probably aren’t significant. If there was corresponding symptomatology, it would mean your symptoms WERE consistent with where the discs are protruding - i.e. probably cause and effect. That’s all the “corresponding” bit means - do your symptoms match the places where damage is observable on the scan? If they DON’T, then it’s probably a coincidence and the features noted on the scan are a coincidence, not the cause.
I hope this helps a bit. I’m sorry about the change of font halfway through. It’s too small for me too, but the forum isn’t letting me change it back, and I can’t fart about with it any more, as I’m getting in a temper.
Tina
x
Huh! And when I post it, it doesn’t change font halfway through, but puts it all in the piddly font. Great!
Thanks Anitra…and you made me laugh!
the letter says…however there is corresponding clinical symptomatology
Also forgot to say…
Having lots of symptoms but mainly in the legs and head…
I can cope with the physical stuff but the problems with confusion and lack of memory is making me feel i cant go forward in life…and i feel pretty stupid too 
Hmmm. I’m still left wondering if he (or his typist) left a word out, because I don’t really understand the “however”, unless he was making the point the disc protrusions WEREN’T matched by symptoms.
To paraphrase him slightly, if he’d said: “There are disc protrusions, however they do NOT match the symptoms”, it would make more sense than if he’d said: “There are disc protrusions, however they DO match the symptoms”.
I do hope I’m not making it more confusing for you, but I don’t understand why he’d use “however”, if he was saying the symptoms were consistent with the protrusions. To me, he seems to be explaining why he doesn’t think the protrusions are important - which would be if they had NO corresponding symptoms.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but it just doesn’t seem to read right.
Could you ask your GP to talk you through it - see if it made any more sense to him/her than it does to me? And there should be some “next steps”, too.
On any reading of it, these don’t sound like normal findings, but they don’t sound like a description of MS, either, although I’m not sure what a “small lesion, nothing to worry about” is, if he’s saying it’s NOT demyelination. He seems quite clear on that last point.
Tina
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i am really confused with it, but it dosen’t take much these days. Thanks Tina for trying to interpret the results, much appreciated