Clinical analysis of cases of intramedullary gliomas of the spinal cord appears to have been neglected. The reason is probably that for the most part such growths represent hopeless surgical problems as compared with the extramedullary tumors of the spinal cord, by which they are greatly outnumbered. Yet an understanding of the characteristics of intramedullary tumors is obviously desirable, and it is largely for this reason that we have undertaken a review of 27 verified cases, with the purpose of correlating the pathologic and the clinical features in order to clarify their diagnostic characteristics.
PATHOLOGIC FEATURES
Since the growth history of intramedullary gliomas is closely connected with their clinical features, a brief consideration of their life cycle is pertinent.The incidence of intramedullary gliomas is variously estimated as 10 to 20 per cent of all tumors of the spinal cord.1 Intramedullary tumors extend as a rule over many segments