Myelopathy in Pregnant Women: Case of Acute Transverse Myelitis

Acute Transverse myelitis during pregnancy is rare and is life-threatening for parturient women and their pregnancies. We report case of young Senegalese parturient woman. This is a patient old 20 years, 1 pregnancy, 1 parity, with a history of asthma and gestational hypertension, who presented motor deficit of 04 members with progressive installation on twenty days during a pregnancy to term (9 months) from where achieving a scheduled cesarean during labor that allowed the extraction of a girl with no abnormalities. Then the patient was sent to our neurology’s department of Fann Hospital in Dakar where she was hospitalized for suitable care. The diagnosis of acute transverse myelitis was retained on clinical evidence of a spinal interruption syndrome confirmed by paraclinical investigations. The spinal MRI showed extensive hyperintense signal from C4 to C6. An inflammatory syndrome with CRP at 108 mg and a high CSF protein at 2.07 g/l. The patient had received corticosteroids and physical rehabilitation followed by a favorable outcome. The tetraplegia during pregnancy should be investigated myelopathy as acute transverse myelitis. It is therefore necessary that these women have a multidisciplinary care between neurologists and gynecologists to cause showing a better prognosis.