Today I received this letter from my specialist. I was hoping someone may be able to shed some light on it for me as I don’t have a follow up appointment for a couple week. It reads; MRI scan of the brain does show an area of signal change at the C2/3 level with possibly another lesion at T1/2 A lesion at the C2/3 level would account for symptoms Thanks you, Emma x
Hello there.
I am not an expert on this but have a read of this:
http://www.medhelp.org/tags/health_page/7687/Multiple-Sclerosis/How-MRIs-Show-Lesions-in-MS?hp_id=23
C stands for cervical spine (= neck); T stands for thoracic spine (= upper/middle back). The spine is numbered according to the vertebrae. The highest one is C1, then C2, C3, etc as you go down the spine. See here for some good info on it: Spinal Cord & Column | Spinal Cord Injury Information Pages
Your results mean that you definitely have one lesion high up in your neck (C2/3) and another possible one lower down, at the top of the thoracic spine (T1/2). C2/3 nerves are important for the head and neck. T1/2 nerves are important for the hands. Lesions in the spinal cord can affect anything below that level too though so you may have other bits causing problems.
Hth.
Karen x
Well, that’s weird, because it talks about an MRI of the brain, but then goes on to describe findings which are definitely NOT in your brain, but in your spinal cord - which I’m presuming they must have scanned as well? (If they didn’t, then you have the wrong results…)
The spinal cord is divided up into sections. C stands for “cervical”, or neck. So any location labelled C-something is in the neck area. You have a lesion in the neck section of your spinal cord (the most common site for MS lesions, outside of the brain). This would accound for symptoms below the neck.
T stands for “thoracic”, or chest. So you have a possible lesion in the chest section of your spinal cord as well (actually, it’s right at the top of the chest section - not very far from the neck).
This one is not as clear or definite, so it hasn’t been mentioned as a possible cause of the symptoms, as the cervical (neck) one seems to account for those already.
I suspect you still won’t get a firm diagnosis at your appointment. MS may be mentioned as a possibility, and you may also be told they’d like to do a lumbar puncture (if they haven’t already), OR you may be told it might never happen again, and given a review appointment some time away (a year?) BUT told to make contact sooner, if anything should happen in the meantime.
These are just my guesses…
What actually happens at your appointment may be different.
Tina