Clinical importance of somatosensory evoked potentials in early diagnosis of syringomyelia.

We report a rare case of syringomyelia, the development of which was monitored by somatosensory evoked potentials. The evoked potentials recorded over an eight months' period of time were correlated with the incidence of syringomyelia. Changes of the evoked response latency and amplitude were dtected. The evoked potential change and the sensation deficit indicated a pathological process. High-resolution MRI revealed syringomyelia in the cervical and the thoracic segments of the spinal cord. Somatosensory evoked potentials represent a sensitive diagnostic method recording changes in the biopotentials. Potential changes require localisation of a possible process and high-resolution MRI. Evoked potentials enable to monitor both, the disease development, but also the healing process (Fig. 3, Ref 11).