[Experimental study of acute spinal cord injury: a histopathological study]

The microscopic appearance of a rat spinal cord which was acutely compressed by aneurysmal clip for one minute, was investigated 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours and 6 hours after the injury. Although the resulting small hemorrhagic lesion involved primarily only the central gray matter of the injured portion 15 minutes after compression injury, hemorrhage, necrosis and edema in the central gray matter enlarged progressively until 3 hours after injury. Petechial hemorrhage, necrosis and edema were observed in the surrounding area one hour after spinal compression. Then these pathological changes extended rostrally and caudally, but their extension was more significantly remarkable in the rostral side than in the caudal side 3 hours after compression. It was observed that leukocytes begin to infiltrate into the injured capillary walls and plug up the capillary lumen 30 minutes after the injury. Three hours following the injury, leukocytes (lymphocyte, macrophage) extravasated into the surrounding spinal tissue. From these histopathological observations, we reached the following conclusions. A. Secondary injuries play an important role in grave impairment of neurological function of the spinal cord following acute trauma. B. Pathological findings (hemorrhage necrosis and edema) extend more prominently to the rostral side, because the direction of spinal blood flow may be rostral in the thoracic spinal cord. C. Severe disturbance of intraspinal capillary blood flow leading to grave spinal damage may be evoked, because leukocytes infiltrate into the capillary around the injured area and plug up the their lumen about 30 minutes after the injury.