Brown-Séquard syndrome

Brown-Séquard syndrome (also known as Brown-Séquard's hemiplegia, Brown-Séquard's paralysis, hemiparaplegic syndrome, hemiplegia et hemiparaplegia spinalis, or spinal hemiparaplegia) is a neurological condition caused by damage to one half of the spinal cord. The condition presents clinically with spastic paralysis and loss of fine touch perception, vibratory sensation and proprioception just below the lesion on the same side of the body as the lesion, but with loss of crude touch, pain an temperature sensation and on the opposite side and beginning somewhat lower than the lesion. At the level of the lesion, on the same side of the lesion, there is meanwhile a region of flaccid paralysis and complete loss of all sensation.

Because injury to a whole half but only one half of the spinal cord only rarely occurs under real-life circumstances, the condition is most often encountered in partial forms.

It is named after physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, who first described the condition in 1850.^[1]