Despite the high level of resistance to infection by normal spinal cord tissue, authors of a few case reports have described an antecedent systemic bacterial or fungal infection with the formation of an intramedullary abscess. In one reported case, a patient presented with infective endocarditis of the mitral valve, but the patient had a previous history of radiotherapy, with the treatment field including the spinal cord, for the treatment of Hodgkin’s lymphoma . This suggests that residual tissue damage caused by radiotherapy may have predisposed the patient to the formation of the intramedullary abscess. In another case, a previously healthy patient presented with infective endocarditis of the aortic valve and was later found to have an 8 × 15-mm intramedullary abscess in the cervical spinal cord .