BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Diffusion tensor MR imaging is emerging as an important tool for displaying anatomic changes in the brain after injury or disease but has been less widely applied to disorders of the spinal cord. The aim of this study was to characterize the diffusion properties of the entire human spinal cord in vivo during the chronic stages of spinal cord injury (SCI). These data provi...

Copyright © 2017 Massachusetts Medical Society. Acute compression of the spinal cord is a devastating but treatable disorder. Diseases that cause acute spinal cord compression constitute a special category because they originate in the spinal column and narrow the spinal canal. This review addresses the disorders that account for most instances of acute spinal cord compression: trauma, tumor, e...

The hypermobility of the pediatric bony cervical spine allows deformation of the musculoskeletal structures beyond physiologic extremes, permitting direct trauma or ischemic injury of the spinal cord followed by spontaneous reduction of the bony spine. This predisposes to a spinal cord injury without radiological abnormality (SCIWORA) [1] . SCIWORA has positive neurologic Received: August 5, 20...

The authors present a review of spinal cord blood supply, discussing the anatomy of the vascular system and physiological aspects of blood flow regulation in normal and injured spinal cords. Unique anatomical functional properties of vessels and blood supply determine the susceptibility of the spinal cord to damage, especially ischemia. Spinal cord injury (SCI), for example, complicating thorac...

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury stimulates an inflammatory reaction that causes substantial secondary damage inside the injured spinal tissue. The purpose of this study was to determine the anti-inflammatory effect of oleuropein on traumatized spinal cord. METHODS Rats were randomly divided into four groups of 7 rats each as follows: Sham-operated group, trauma group, and oleuropein treatment g...

r w t m s i a a t t t c t t p A u s L i he American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) convened a panel in April 005 to create a Practice Advisory on the Neurologic omplications of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medcine. This review deals with the pathophysiology of pinal cord injury. The Practice Advisory recommenations are based on extensive review of existing anmal and hum...

Calcium has been proposed as a mediator of nerve fiber degeneration following traumatic injury of the spinal cord. It induces a spongy, necrotizing myelopathy similar in its evolution to that observed in experimental spinal cord trauma. The current study was undertaken to determine the ultrastructural changes in the central nervous system (CNS) nerve fibers associated with calcium-induced myelo...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to elucidate the protection by and potential mechanisms of LM22A-4, a specific agonist of tyrosine kinase receptor B, against spinal cord injury (SCI). METHODS Spinal cord trauma was induced by the application of vascular clips to the dura of mice via a four-level T7-T11 laminectomy. Thirty minutes after the injury, an abdominal injection of LM22A-4 (at do...

BACKGROUND Previous investigations indicate that the spinal cord, perhaps with a minor cerebral contribution, mediates the capacity of inhaled anesthetics to produce immobility in the face of noxious stimulation. The implications of these investigations may be limited by the trauma associated with their experimental methods (e.g., cardiopulmonary bypass or transection of the spinal cord). The p...

BACKGROUND Prompted by an increase in interventional pain treatments performed at the level of the cervical spine, we investigated the characteristics and patterns of injury in malpractice claims collected from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2008. METHODS We compared claims arising from cervical pain treatments with all other chronic pain claims collected from the American Society of Anesthe...