For patients with malignant spinal cord compression (MSCC) who are paraparetic or paraplegic before initiating treatment, the current treatment options provide a meager to poor chance of neurologic recovery and the prognosis is guarded. Improving the chance of ambulation after treatment for MSCC may dramatically improve patients' quality of life, decrease days spent in hospital and improve survival. Steroids appear to prevent neurologic damage from MSCC and increasing doses appear to have an increasingly protective effect, however, higher doses are limited by an increasing incidence of serious toxicity.