Chemotherapy and radiation therapy were also administered and the cancer’s progression was halted, with neurological function preserved. To decompress the cervical spine the man underwent a corpectomy with dorsal segmental fusion, meaning that the diseased vertebral body was removed and the spine fused to restore stability. An MRI was carried out and the man was found to have serious compression of the spinal cord, mostly at the level of C7 due to aggressive, fast-growing anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). In a paper published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports back in 2010, Smith, Sedrak and Khoo detailed the unfortunate case of a 23 year old American man who had experienced two months of night sweats, fatigue, parasthesias, and progressive weakness and who had become nearly quadriplegic. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the cervical spine can be a cause of spinal cord compression and neck pain but these serious underlying causes may be overlooked, especially in the elderly where weakness and falls are attributed to other conditions. There are so many common causes of neck pain, most of which are non-life threatening, that few stop to consider that a pain in the neck could have a cancerous root.
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