Posterior spinal artery infarction and nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis

Nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) has been described as an important complication in patients affected by different kind of illnesses, above all underlying malignancies. Fifty % of the patients affected by NBTE will have embolic events in different organs. The poverty of specific symptomatology appears to difficult seriously its diagnosis. In fact, systemic embolic infarctions are usually asymptomatic, except when central nervous system is involved. We present a patient affected by NBTE with an asymptomatic cervical spinal cord infarction, which diagnosis was made by pathologic study. The difficulty to explore typical sings of spinal lesion and the absence of previous reported cases of NBTE with posterior spinal artery infarction, make this one fairly interesting. We think that fibrinoplatelet embolism from NBTE should be included in the etiology of the posterior spinal artery infarction.