Cerebrospinal Fluid Lactate Level Following Experimental Spinal Cord Injury

Jae O Kim, Dong Been Park, Kyu Man Shin

Corresponding author: Kyu Man Shin. Department of Neurosurgery, Ewha Womans University, College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Copyright ⓒ . Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jul 24, 2015

Abstract

For the purpose of ascertaining the role and magnitude of ischemia of the spin-al cord following trauma the authors determine the lactate concentrations in cere-brospinal fluid(CSF). Laminectomies were performed at L2 under general anes-thesia with aseptic techniques. Paraplegia was produced by 400 gm-cm impact injury with impounder. Significant increases in CSF lactate levels occurring at Day 5. The prolonged elevation of CSF lactate indicates that tissue hypoxia plays a role in spinal cord damage and that there is a continuing hypoxia of metabolically active spinal cord tissue for several days post injury.

Keywords: Spinal cord injury; CSF; Lactate