The Experimental Studies Of Novel Protective Measures Against Brain And Spinal Cord Injuries

The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) could be damaged by both ischemia/reperfusion injury and anesthetics during the perioperative period. The brain and spinal cord ischemia can be caused by surgical procedures such as intracranial arterial-venous malformations, thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery. And the toxicities of anesthetics such as local anesthetics can also result in brain and spinal cord injuries. Therefore, how to prevent and treat brain and spinal cord injures during the perioperative period has been one of the most important issues in medical research. Ischemic preconditioning was found to be able to induce protection against ischemia/reperfusion injury in both brain and spinal cord. But it is difficulty to directly apply it in clinical practice. The non-ischemic preconditioning modalities such as inhaled anesthetics and hyperbaric oxygen have attracted much interest. In our previous studies, we investigated the protective effects of preconditioning with hyperbaric oxygen (HBO), isoflurane and electroacupuncture against brain or spinal cord ischemia and found that preconditioning with HBO, isoflurane and electroacupuncture could mimic ischemic preconditioning to induce the ischemic tolerance both in brain and spinal cord. The underlying mechanisms were also studied. However, the problem of protecting the central nervous system is far from being solved. Moreover, there are few effective measures except selecting less dosage of local anesthetics in relieving neurotoxicity of local anesthetics.