A new rat spinal cord injury model: a ventral compression technique.

A new rat spinal cord injury model, which uses a modification of a DeBakey aortic aneurysm clamp to create the injury, is presented. The model produces a ventral persisting mass (bone and soft tissue) without the requirement of a prior decompressive operation (laminectomy). Modifications of the original technique have resulted in a nil surgical mortality rate. This technique has been applied to 138 animals. It has produced a consistent percentage of animals with complete myelopathies, as well as incomplete myelopathies and animals without apparent injury. The percent of baseline neurological function lost (change in degrees of the angle of tilt as measured by the inclined plane technique) in each group of surviving animals was 58, 36, and 9%, respectively. Sagittal postmortem sections confirmed mass lesions located ventral to the spinal cord. Histological sections confirmed neuronal loss consistent with the neurological findings.