Evoked Potentials In The Evaluation Of Neurological Function After Spinal Cord Compression Injury

Objective: The purpose of the research was to establish a good animal model of cervical spinal cord compression and was to evaluation the validity and feasibility of cortical somatosensory evoked potentials (CSEP) and transcranial magnetic stimulation motor evoked potential(TMS-MEP). In the present experiment, the effect of a spinal cord compressive model on evoked potentials was studies in order to use evoked potentials as a parameter for the spinal cord function. The aim of the research is to determine whether the evoked potentials results have strong association with spinal cord function, behaviour test, pathological outcome.Methed: There are many models have been designd to simulate spinal cord injury. In this study, the catheters with balloon were used to compress the animal cervical spinal cord .It cause an ischemia lesion, which seen in human SCI frequently.32 rabbits with body weight between 2.0 and 2.8kg used in the experimental were divided into four groups randomly. The rabbit were anesthetized with sodium pentobarbital by intravenous injection. The interspace between C7 and T1 vertebral was exposed. The catheter was inserted into vertebral canal and balloon was gassed to compress spinal cord in epidural. The compression time was 30 minutes in the study.