Brown Sequard Syndrome: All You Need To Know [Learn Through A Video]
Brown Sequard Syndrome is a neurological syndrome that refers to a condition that damages a person’s half spinal cord. To make understanding brown sequard syndrome easier, we will be talking about the syndrome in detail. This article about the brown Sequard syndrome is divided into the following parts.
- Background
- How the world got to know
- What happens if one gets brown sequard syndrome
- Brown sequard syndrome symptoms
- Brown sequard syndrome epidemiology
- Brown sequard syndrome radiology
- Brown sequard syndrome etiology or causes
- Brown sequard syndrome diagnosis
- Brown sequard syndrome prognosis treatment
- Brown sequard syndrome complication
- Patient education
- Brown sequard syndrome physiopedia
Background
Brown Sequard disorder is an inadequate spinal cord sore described by a clinical picture reflecting hemisection injury of the spinal cord, regularly in the cervical cord area. It was first described by Charles Edouard in 1894, a famous physiologist. He stated that brown sequard disorder causes hemisection to damage the neural tracts inside the spinal cord. The neural tracts help in carrying the information to the brain and from the brain.
How Did The World Get To Know About It?
Charles Edouard, a famous physiologist talked about the brown sequard syndrome for the first time in 1894. He discovered this neurological disorder while examining a sea captain who was stabbed in the neck. He discovered that brown sequard syndrome is a condition that shows a fragmented pattern of injury showing a hemisection of the spinal cord which brings about shortcoming and loss of motion on one side of the harm and loss of pain and temperature sensations on the contrary sid
What Happens in Brown Sequard Syndrome?
As mentioned earlier, brown sequard syndrome affects the hemisection harms neural lots in the spinal string that convey data to and from the brain.
This results in a deficiency of sensations pain, temperature, contact, just as the loss of motion/movement or loss of muscle work in certain pieces of the body.
What Are The Symptoms?
Brown sequard syndrome can be recognized by the following happenings:
- Loss of motor function also known as hemiparaplegia
- Loss of vibration sense
- Loss of touch sense
- Loss of position sense also known as proprioception
- Contralateral loss of painless
- Loss of temperature sensation
- Loss of two-point discrimination
Other than the above mentioned, any sort of weakness on the ipsilateral side of spinal injury can also be counted as one of the symptoms of brown sequard syndrome.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Epidemiology
11,000 spinal cord injuries new cases are recorded each year in the United States including paraplegia and tetraplegia. However, since brown sequard syndrome talks about the damage to one side of the spinal cord (only hemisection), it is rare i.e. only 4% of the spinal cord injuries are stated as brown sequard syndrome.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Radiology
Radiology helps to determine and diagnose the etiology of brown sequard syndrome. Move ahead to know what etiology is.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Etiology / What Are The Causes?
Brown Sequard Syndrome can be caused by the following reason:
- Any sort of spinal cord tumor
- Any spinal cord trauma (a puncture/wound)
- Ischemia (blocking of a blood vessel)
- Any infectious disease (tuberculosis)
The causes of brown sequard syndrome can be divided into two parts; traumatic and non-traumatic. However, traumatic injuries are mostly the reason behind brown sequard syndrome.
Traumatic Reasons
- Stabbing
- Car accidents
- Gunshots
- Blunt trauma
- Fracture
- Falling off a height
Non-traumatic Reasons
- Vertebral disc herniation
- Cyst
- Tumors
- Cystic disease
- Hemorrhage
- Ischemia
- Decompression sickness
How Is It Diagnosed?
Brown sequard syndrome is diagnosed through MRI (Medical resonance imaging). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the imaging of decisions in spinal line lesions. The determination of Brown’s sequard condition is made based on history and actual assessment. Brown sequard syndrome is a fragmented spinal cord injury portrayed by discoveries on a clinical assessment that reflect the spinal cord’s hemisection (slicing the spinal string down the middle on either side).
However, if the cause of brown sequard syndrome was a spinal cord trauma, there are high chances that other injuries may too be present. Research center examinations may likewise be valuable in nontraumatic etiologies, like infectious causes.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Prognosis, The Likely Outcome
The prognosis of brown sequard syndrome varies from person to person depending on their strength and recovery procedure. The prognosis for the recovery of motion sensing in brown sequard syndrome is optimistic. It is said that having 1-year motor recovery (one-half to two-thirds) in the initial stages (first 1 or 2 months) of the injury can end in a successful recovery. However, the recovery may slow down for the next 3 to 6 months and can last up to 2 years following injury.
What Are The Possible Treatments?
Treatment of Brown sequard syndrome can vary from person to person focusing on preventive complications and causes. It is mainly focused on the underlying cause of the syndrome. In the initial early stages, it can be treated using a high dose of steroids in some cases such as traumatic spinal cord injuries due to infections.
Moreover, decompression surgeries are recommended to patients with traumatic injuries or tumors such as car accidents or stabbing. Other than this, physical, recreational, and occupational therapy is important as it helps the person to be mentally stable and to help people, with an accentuation on less reliance for everyday exercises and improving life quality with a multidisciplinary approach including spinal cord injury.
Specific gadgets can assist with improving the personal life and day-to-day exercises for patients with Brown sequard syndrome-like wheelchairs and limb supporters. On the off chance that the patient experiences issues in breathing or gulping, different guides can be applied; cervical collars can likewise be utilized relying upon the degree of injury.
Complications If brown sequard syndrome is left untreated
If brown sequard syndrome is left untreated, it can bring certain complications like:
- Spinal shock
- Depression
- Pulmonary embolism
- Infectious diseases (lungs and urinary tracts can be affected negatively)
- hypotension
Patient Education
Since there can be traumatic reasons for brown sequard syndrome, in most cases physical therapy and rehabilitation have been said to prompt brief manifestation goals. Brown sequard syndrome has the best visualization for ambulation of all spinal cord wounds with up to 90% of people strolling without the help of gadgets after recovery.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Physiopedia
With Brown-Sequard disorder, a neat and tidy hemisection is typically not noticeable. Be that as it may, halfway hemisection is obvious, and it regularly incorporates all the nerve lots lying along the way in the harmed region. hemisection would make deficiencies in an accompanying way:
- Dorsal Sections
Sensations that are answerable for fine touch, vibration, two-point separation, would be influenced on a similar side of the sore. Second, there are two rising dorsal segment tracts: the fasciculus gracilis which conveys tactile data from the lower trunk and legs, and the fasciculus cuneatus which conveys tangible data from the upper trunk and arms.
- Spinothalamic Tracts
These are answerable for pain, temperature, and vibration touch would be influenced contralateral to the injury since they climb a level up and afterward cross to the contrary side of the spinal cord.
These lots both convey sensations like pressing factor, vibration, fine touch – which is the place where you can limit where you were contacted, and proprioception which is a consciousness of your body position in space.
- Dorsal And Ventral Spinocerebellar Tracts
Conveying impressions of oblivious proprioception, injury influencing dorsal spinocerebellar parcels cause ipsilateral dystaxia, and association of ventral spinocerebellar would cause contralateral dystaxia as these strands climb and cross to the contrary side.
- Horner’s Disorder
This can cause redness of the face because of vasodilation. If the sore is at or above T1, this will cause ipsilateral loss of thoughtful strands bringing about ptosis, miosis, and anhidrosis.
- Corticospinal Tracts
At last, there’s the corticospinal tract which is a dropping pathway that conveys engine data from the brain to various muscles in the body and it controls deliberate muscle development. There would be an ipsilateral loss of developments at the site of the injury which gives flabby loss of motion, lower engine neuron sore like loss of bulk, fasciculations, and diminished force and tone.
For instance, in the event that you inadvertently contact a hot skillet, the impression of pain and temperature is conveyed from the nerves in the skin of your fingers, through a first request neuron.
Brown Sequard Syndrome: Learn Through A Video
This video talks about the brown sequard syndrome in detail.
Bottom Line
Brown sequard syndrome is rare. It is a neurological disorder of the spinal cord that only affects a certain part of the spinal cord. It can cause one to lose their sensory feels. However, it can be treated according to the cause of it.
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