THE SO-CALLED HOUR-GLASS TUMORS OF THE SPINE

Abstract

The experience some years ago of finding at operation on a paraplegic patient a circumscribed extradural spinal tumor, the narrowed pedicle of which proceeded through an enlarged intervertebral foramen to be continuous with a larger growth in the posterior mediastinum, has led to a continued interest in the so-called hour-glass or dumb-bell tumors involving the spinal cord. My first patient was seen and operated on in 1916, and only recently have two others come under my observation. To the comparatively few who have personally observed them at the operating or autopsy table, these tumors are well known; to the great majority of physicians and surgeons they are apparently quite unknown. They have a very general interest, for while they implicate the cord eventually and are therefore more often seen by the neurologist and neurosurgeon, their paravertebral portions may present in the neck or back to confuse the general surgeon just