Neurology
September 11, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Clinical Reasoning: A 59-Year-Old Man With Delayed Electric Shock-Like Sensations After a Fall.
Jafari Tadi M, Aggarwal A, Akinci Y, Ragati Haghi H, Noor E.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
A clinical reasoning case describes delayed Lhermitte sign weeks after a fall in a 59-year-old man with normal neurologic exam and MRI.
What was studied
A single case report illustrating a structured clinical reasoning approach to post-traumatic sensory phenomena.
Key findings
- Transient global sensory loss and C6 paresthesias occurred right after the fall and resolved
- Neck flexion-triggered electric shock-like sensations began 3-4 weeks later
- Exam and serial brain and spine MRI showed no abnormalities
Clinical relevance
Educational case illustrating differential diagnosis of delayed post-traumatic Lhermitte sign; single cases cannot establish general conclusions.
Who should care
Limitations
Single case report; final diagnosis and outcome are not detailed in the abstract.
Delayed Lhermitte sign after trauma can occur even with normal imaging.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
We present a 59-year-old man who developed delayed-onset electric shock-like sensations triggered by neck flexion approximately 3-4 weeks after a workplace fall. Immediately after the fall, he experienced a brief episode of transient global sensory loss that resolved within minutes, followed by headache and posterior neck pain. Approximately 10 minutes later, he developed bilateral upper extremity paresthesias in the C6 dermatomal distribution that gradually resolved over several hours. Several weeks later, he developed reproducible electric shock-like sensations radiating from the neck throughout the body with neck flexion, consistent with Lhermitte sign. Neurologic examination revealed no motor or sensory deficits. MRI of the brain was unremarkable, and serial MRI studies of the cervical and thoracic spine showed no intramedullary abnormalities. This case demonstrates a structured clinical reasoning approach to post-traumatic sensory phenomena.
DOI
10.1212/wnl.0000000000218525
PMID
42727039
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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