BACKGROUND: Paraplegia is a serious complication of thoracic or thoracoabdominal aortic operations, which is related to ischemic injury of the spinal cord induced by low perfusion pressure during cross clamping of the aorta. Ischemic preconditioning of heart or brain with reversible sublethal ischemic injury induces resistance to subsequent lethal ischemia. The aim of this study is to investigate whether ischemic tolerance could be induced by the preconditioning of the spinal cord using swine model. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The animals were randomly assigned to three groups: sham group(n=3), control group(n=6) and preconditioning group(n=8). In the sham group, we performed the left thoracotomy only without any ischemic injury. In the preconditioning group, the swine received reversible spinal cord ischemic injury by aortic clamping for 20minutes, whereas control group had no previous aortic cross- clamping. Forty-eight hours later, the aorta was clamped for 30 minutes in both groups. Neurological examination was done 24hours later, then the animals were euthanized for histopathology and malonedialdehyde(MDA) spectrophotometry assay of the spinal cord. RESULT: Statistically significant difference in neurological outcome was observed between the control and preconditioning groups at 24hours after ischemic injury. The incidence of paraplegia and severe paresis was 100% in the control group, and 62.5% in the preconditing group(p=0.028). There was no statistically significant difference in histopathology and MDA assay of the ischemic spinal cord between these two groups with borderline statistical difference in MDA assay(p=0.0745). CONCLUSION: In the present swine study, ischemic preconditioning could induce tolerance against 30 minute ischemic insult of the spinal cord, although the animals did not completely recover(stand-up or walk). We expect that combining this preconditioning with other currently existing protection methods might lead to a synergistic effect, which warrants further investigation.
Animals ; Aorta ; Brain ; Constriction ; Heart ; Incidence ; Ischemia ; Ischemic Preconditioning* ; Neurologic Examination ; Paraplegia ; Paresis ; Perfusion ; Spectrophotometry ; Spinal Cord* ; Swine ; Thoracotomy