Tumors affecting the spine are fortunately uncommon, and may arise within the spine or metastasize from malignancies elsewhere. Effective treatment is determined by tumor type, location, and urgency. In this episode, Allison Weathers, MD, FAAN, speaks with J. Ricardo McFaline-Figueroa, MD, PhD, author of the article “Spinal Cord Neoplasms,” in the Continuum February 2024 Spinal Cord Disorders issue. Dr. Weathers is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and the associate chief medical information officer at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. McFaline-Figueroa is a physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and instructor in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Additional Resources Read the article: Spinal Cord Neoplasms 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 More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Transcript  Full transcript available on Libsyn 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 to 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 Weathers: This is Dr Allison Weathers. Today I'm interviewing Dr Riccardo McFaline-Figueroa on spinal cord neoplasms, which is part of the February Continuum issue on spinal cord disorders. Dr McFaline-Figueroa is a physician at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, an instructor in neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome to the podcast. You do a really fantastic job in the article providing a comprehensive overview. But if you had to come up with the most important clinical takeaway from the article that you want our listeners to walk away with, what would that be? Dr McFaline-Figueroa: I think the most important thing to remember about tumors of the spinal cord is, one, that there is no specific diagnostic feature on imaging that can be used to determine what a neoplasm of the spinal cord is or even if it is a neoplasm - I think, going in broadly, when you're looking at a mass lesion of the spinal cord, is very important. Then the second is just to know that there's just such a wide range of cancer possibilities that can do this, that getting an appropriate diagnosis becomes very important. Dr Weathers: I think two really salient points right there. I want to explore something that you said a little bit more. You talk about the concept that there's no one diagnostic feature of the MRI, and actually, I was thinking about this as I was reading your article. What struck me, too, is that that holds true, actually, for the patient’s presenting signs and symptoms, right? As a neurohospitalist, I'm constantly struggling with always how to balance not missing a diagnosis such as this (a diagnosis of spinal cord tumor), versus putting a patient through what can be an often unnecessary and very costly workup, right? So, this is such a rare diagnosis, but t