Cervical spinal cord infarction associated with coronavirus infectious disease (COVID)-19

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has a number of emerging neurological manifestations in addition to pneumonia and respiratory distress. In what follows, we describe a case of a previously healthy young man with severe COVID-19 who subsequently developed an acute flaccid paralysis. Work up revealed a lesion in his cervical spinal cord concerning for spinal infarction or transverse myelitis. He received empiric pulsed steroids without improvement. Taken together, we felt his presentation was most consistent with spinal cord infarction in the setting of critical illness with COVID-19. We believe this is a rare case of spinal cord stroke associated with COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Hypercoagulable; SAR-CoV-2; Spinal cord infarct.