An action of fentanyl, a short-acting narcotic, on the reflex discharge in the digastric nerve induced by the inferior alveolar nerve stimulation was investigated in alpha-chloralose anesthetized cats. In the ipsilateral digastric reflex discharge, there were an early phase induced by stimulus exciting Aalpha fibers and a late phase appearing when Adelta fibers were also stimulated. Following d...

OBJECTIVE Up to 90% of patients with advanced cancer experience intractable pain. For these patients, oral analgesics are the mainstay of therapy, often augmented with intrathecal drug delivery. Neurosurgical ablative procedures have become less commonly used, though their efficacy has been well-established. Unfortunately, little is known about the safety of ablation in the context of previous ...

To determine the effect of cordotomy on the function of the bladder during surgical correction of congenital kyphosis in myelomeningocele, we reviewed 13 patients who had this procedure between 1981 and 1996. The mean age of the patients at operation was 8.9 years (3.7 to 16) and the mean follow-up was 4.8 years (1.3 to 10.8). Bladder function before and after operation was assessed clinically ...

In midline myelotomy a small mechanical or radiofrequency lesion was made at the centre of the spinal cord at a single segment at the thoracolumbar junction or at C1. This procedure was used for the management of cancer pain in 20 patients, in four of whom it was combined with unilateral cordotomy. Of 14 patients with myelotomy alone at the thoracolumbar junction 10 (71.5%) had satisfactory rel...

Used predominantly in the treatment ofmalignant pain in the trunk, pelvis and lower limbs, the most successful of these — dorsal rhizotomy, spinothalamic cordotomy and myelotomy—were considered todemonstrate, invariably in non-randomised case series, good to excellent results in selected patients with nociceptive cancer pain. Pain relief would usually bemaintained through a survival period of 9...

In the frog spinal cord about 50% of the 3H-leucine enkephalin (3H-LE) binding sites (b.s.) were blocked by an endogenous ligand. Three days after deafferentation and cordotomy the number of free b.s. increased by 44 and 56%, respectively. In spinal frogs the threshold of the flexor reflex responses evoked by nociceptive stimuli decreased. More than 7 days after deafferentation and cordotomy th...

Much has been written concerning the spinothalamic tract in the rabbit, monkey and man. However, many early and more recent investigators using the cat have not been able to trace this tract to the thalamus by the Marchi method (P a t r i k, '93, '96 ; Chang and R u c h, '47 ; Morin et al., '52). In recent years silver techniques have been widely utilized in demonstrating precise fiber connecti...

Like most reviews on the pathophysiology of pain this lecture will mainly consider the physiology of nociceptiono Nociception like other sensory modalities is subserved by a specific array of nervous connexions which have been known in broad lines for many yearso A number ofneurosurgical operating procedures (cordotomy, tractotomy .oo) were based on this' knowledge. In recent years owing to maj...