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Queckenstedt’s manoeuvre

Department of Neurology, Hull Royal Infirmary, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
J M S Pearce
304 Beverley Road, Anlaby, East Yorks, HU10 7BG, UK; jmsp@freenet.co.uk

Received 4 November 2005
In final revised form 5 December 2005

Accepted for publication 8 December 2005

Abbreviations: CSF, cerebrospinal fluid

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This paper describes the beginnings of the measurement of CSF pressure and its physiological fluctuations by Queckenstedt that culminated in his clinical test for spinal canal obstruction.

In 1891, Walter Essex Wynter, physician to the Middlesex Hospital, described the insertion of a Southey’s tube to withdraw infected cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to reduce CSF pressure in meningitis. One month earlier, Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke (1842–1922), who held Chairs in Berne and then Kiel, described lumbar puncture.¹ The procedure was quickly established.

Hans Queckenstedt, while serving in the army in 1916, devised his test to detect spinal cord compression. He described:

"The narrowed [spinal] channel impedes movement of fluid with an increase in pressure above the compression site... The increment in pressure above the obstruction can be demonstrated by compression of the neck..., which produces an increase in venous blood in the cranial cavity, with concomitant reduction in space for the cerebrospinal fluid... . . . [Full text of this article]