Pathological changes from acute to chronic in experimental spinal cord trauma.

The pathological changes occurring in the thoracic spinal cords of 41 cats were studied by light microscopy at 4 hours, 4 weeks, and 4 months after graded transdural trauma. Alterations characteristic of a vascular injury proportionate to the magnitude of the original trauma which results in tissue hypoxia, destruction, and reparation were identified at each interval studied. In more severely injured animals these changes consisted of an initial hemorrhagic infarction followed by the removal of necrotic parenchyma and the development of an adhesive arachnoiditis and intramedullary carvitation. A comparison of the findings in the present investigation with what has been described in postmortem studies of spinal cord injured patients indicates that the response of the spinal cord to non-disruptive trauma is similar in both cases.