The spinal cord is a fragile network containing hundreds of millions of neurons, all passing through a conduit about the size of a dime. A consistent, organized approach to the diagnosis of spinal cord disease is necessary to give patients the best possible care. In this episode, Teshamae Monteith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Carlos Pardo, MD, author of the article “Clinical Approach to Myelopathy Diagnosis,” in the Continuum February 2024 Spinal Cord Disorders issue. Dr. Monteith is the associate editor of Continuum® Audio and an associate professor of clinical neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. Dr. Pardo is a professor of neurology and pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Myelitis and Myelopathy Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Additional Resources Read the article: Clinical Approach to Myelopathy Diagnosis Subscribe to Continuum: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud American Academy of Neurology website: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @headacheMD Transcript Full Transcript Available Here Dr Jones: This is Dr. Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal, from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, a companion podcast of the journal. Continuum Audio features conversations with the guest editors and authors of Continuum, who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article by visiting the link in the show notes. Subscribers also have access to exclusive audio content not featured on the podcast. As an ad-free journal entirely supported by subscriptions, if you're not already a subscriber, we encourage you to become one. For more information on subscribing, please visit the link in the show notes. AAN members, stay tuned after the episode to hear how you can get CME for listening. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Carlos Pardo about his article on an Integrative Clinical Approach to Myelopathy Diagnosis, which is found in the February 2024 Continuum issue on spinal cord disorders. Dr Pardo is a professor of neurology and pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Welcome to the podcast. Carlos, thank you so much for this wonderful article. I think it was great! Dr Pardo: Thank you very much for the invitation and, particularly, to continue to write about myelitis and myelopathy - that is one of my passions in my activities as a clinical neurologist. And I think that this is basically one of the areas in which I thought, after finishing my residency training here, to focus, because there was absolutely no good understanding of the biology, clinical profile – particularly, understanding of the pathophysiology of myelitis and myelopathies, and what was called (at that time) transverse myelitis. So, that is what I have spent the past 25 years is try to understand that concept and apply what I was trained, as a neurologist and neuropathologist, to be translated in the clinical practice. Dr Monteith: Great. Well, I definitely want to know - how did you get into this area? Dr Pardo: That's a very nice question. Dr Monteith: I'm going to give you an easy one. Dr Pardo: I was trained as a clinical neurologist, but at the same time was trained as a clinical and experimental neuropathologist. When I finished my residency training, along with some of my co-residents and colleagues in my residency training, we took the challenge to take a neurological disorder that was call