MR of staphylococcal myelitis of the cervical spinal cord.

A homogeneously enhancing cervical cord lesion and multiple ring-enhancing brain lesions were detected with MR imaging in a 41-year-old woman with a staphylococcal septicemia. The brain and spinal cord lesions diminished in size after antibiotic therapy. Although no biopsy was performed, we believe, on the basis of the clinical outcome, that the spinal cord lesion represented a bacterial myelitis and that the lesion was prevented from developing into an abscess by early antibiotic therapy.