Traumatic acute spinal subarachnoid hematoma.

This report describes a 66-year-old man who presented with progressive paraparesis after a fall. Magnetic resonance imaging showed an acute spinal hematoma at T11-12 with spinal cord compression. The patient underwent an emergency left T11-12 hemilaminectomy. The hematoma was subarachnoid and the source of bleeding was an injured radicular vein. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of traumatic spinal subarachnoid hematoma. We discuss the possible mechanism and our case illustrates an injured radicular vein can be a source of traumatic spinal subarachnoid hematoma.