The spinal nerve root sleeve is not a preferred route for redistribution of drugs from the epidural space to the spinal cord.

It has been frequently suggested that the spinal nerve root sleeve is a preferred route for redistribution of drugs from the epidural space to the spinal cord. To determine if this supposition is true, the authors measured the rate at which morphine, fentanyl, and lidocaine diffuse through dog and monkey meningeal specimens with and without a root sleeve. Two meningeal specimens of intact dura-arachnoid-pia mater were removed from each animal and placed in separate temperature-controlled diffusion cells. One specimen included a spinal nerve root sleeve; the other did not. The permeability of the tissues to each drug was then determined by placing the study drug in one of the reservoirs of the diffusion cell and measuring the rate at which the drug diffused through the tissue and accumulated in the second reservoir. There was no difference in permeability between specimens with and without a nerve root sleeve for any drug in either species. Lidocaine was found to diffuse through the tissue significantly faster than fentanyl in both the dog and monkey even though fentanyl is nearly 48 times more lipid soluble than lidocaine. Morphine diffused through the tissue significantly slower than both lidocaine and fentanyl. The authors conclude that the spinal nerve root sleeve is not a preferred route of entry for drugs moving from the epidural space to the spinal cord. In addition, despite hypotheses to the contrary, lipid solubility does not appear to be the overriding determinant of meningeal permeability.