Spinal cord compression syndrome caused by intraspinal epidural fibrous cord: Three case reports.

RATIONALE: The spinal cord compression caused by intraspinal epidural fibrous cord.

PATIENT CONCERNS: All patients in this study had spinal cord compression syndrome caused by an intraspinal epidural fibrous cord, manifested as abnormally increased epidural adipose tissue by imaging.

DIAGNOSE: These abnormal fibrous connective tissue strips were not identical to the known pathological tissue such as "meningovertebral ligament." Instead, it might be a novel pathogenic cause for the spinal cord compression.

INTERVENTIONS: The intraspinal exploratory operation.

OUTCOMES: the first case has expected effect, the remaining two need further test.

LESSONS SUBSECTIONS: The disease could be easily misdiagnosed as spinal epidural lipoma or lipomatosis before the operation. However, the overt intraoperative finding was the indefinite starting and ending points of the epidural adipose mass in addition to the increased amount of adipose tissue. The obvious compression on the spinal cord could be found as the extraordinarily large and broad hypertrophic fibrous connective tissue strips.Further studies are needed to elucidate whether it is different from, or associated with, lipoma and epidural lipomatosis, which is a serious issue to be considered by both clinicians and radiologists. Therefore, early discovery,diagnosis, and treatment should be the prerequisites to achieve a satisfactory effect.