The Heart That Wasn’t Attacked: A Case of Transverse Myelitis

Transverse myelitis is an autoimmune demyelination disease of the spinal cord that can present with a myriad of symptoms ranging from altered sensations, weakness, loss of bowel control and so forth. There are approximately 1400 new cases reported each year in the United States, but this is likely an underestimation, without a gender bias or familial predisposition and a bimodal age distribution of onset (between 10-19 and 30-39) [1]. The majority of cases are idiopathic and so post-infectious is cited as the reason, although there are secondary causes such as being on the spectrum of multiple sclerosis, neurosarcoidosis, paraneoplastic syndromes and many others. This disease has a 5-10% chance of progressing to other demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis [2].