Cauda equina syndrome. An emergency, some unexpected severe symptoms and conservative treatment.

An 83 years old physician, doing only office work and no exercise, presented with cauda equine, due to a large intervertebral disk hernia between L1-L2 vertebrae, after an unorthodox movement. He also had a facet syndrome, a muscular spasm in the gluteus, a small fracture in the periphery of the body of the L2 vertebra and pain in the L4-L5, due to a previous vertebral hernia five years ago. All L1-L5 left lateral area was painful. He felt an unbearable pain. He also had a degree of paralysis of the gastrointestinal (GI) and the genitourinary system. He could not take analgesics or anti-inflammatory drugs per os because of the paralysis of the GI system. His pain was relieved only by intramuscular injections of parecoximbe (a cyclooxigenase-2 inhibitor, COX-2). The disc hernia was treated without surgery. After 43 days in bed, he was able to start exercising in order to treat muscles' atrophy.