The Arterial Supply of the Spinal Cord and Its Significance

Abstract

It has long been recognized that an adequate the capillaries, to be visualized in the same organ. blood supply is an essential prerequisite to the In a previous paper (Millen and Woollam, 1953) a normal functioning of the neuron. The major method was described which allows such a differcontributions to the study of the vascular architec-entiation to be made. Briefly the technique was as ture of the central nervous system have naturally follows. Blue and red dispersion media were used been based on the examination of the brain. for the injection. (These media were supplied by Investigations of the arterial supply of the spinal the B.B. Chemical Co., Ltd., Ulverscroft Road, cord have been few, and have been limited to the Leicester, England, who state that the dispersions examination of human material obtained at necropsy ' were prepared by ball-milling pigments with a small (Adamkiewicz, 1882;Kadyi, 1889;Tureen, 1938-quantity of a highly active surface wetting agent.Suh and . It appeared therefore The blue pigment used was copper phthalocyanine, that a study of the arterial patterns of the spinal and the red was a red lake pigment.) When the cord based primarily on the use of an experimental red pigment was introduced into the heart or animal might serve to elucidate the principles on ascending aorta it filled the arteries and arterioles, which the blood vessels are distributed to the spinal passed on into the capillaries, and filled both the cord, at the same time providing additional informa-capillaries and veins. The introduction of the tion concerning the manner of vascularization of blue pigment immediately afterwards at the same the central nervous system in general.site pushed the red pigment on into the capillaries A major obstacle to the study of the vascular and veins, but the blue pigment did not itself enter arrangements of the central nervous system has the capillaries. By this method a picture of the been the problem of differentiating the arteries whole vascular system of the animal could be from the veins. Indeed, as recently as 1938, Campbell obtained, in which the arteries were outlined by was obliged to point out that the extensive mono-blue pigment and the veins and capillaries by red. graph of Pfeifer (1930) on the angio-architecture of This method was used for the study of the arterial the cerebral cortex suffered from the serious defect patterns in the rat's spinal cord which is the subject that the structures described as veins were in reality of the present communication. arteries and vice versa. The first experimental Materials and Methods method which allowed of the certain differentiation of the cerebral arteries and veins was that introduced The spinal cords of 16 adult rats were examined. In by Scharrer (1940). In this method the arterial each case the rat was killed with ether, and 2 ml. of syste was i .w.i...thageainssolut the red dispersion was injected into the ascending aorta ssm a injected with a geltin solutonincor through the heart at a pressure of about 80 mm. Hg.porating r...

The Arterial System of the Spinal Cord in the Rat

“…1, 2). The number of the anterior radical arteries was equivalent to that reported by Woollam and Millen (1955). An anterior radical artery at C I was not observed by Kadyi and was seldom seen at C II because the anterior spinal artery arose directly from the vertebral artery.…”

“…Hofmann (1900) and Sterzi (1904) published well-known papers on the comparative anatomy and embryology of the spinal cord. Woollam and Millen (1955) reported that the arterial distribution in the spinal cord of the rat was similar to that in man.…”

Spinal cord ischemia after resection of thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms: MR findings in 24 patients.

“…The number of central arteries supplying each segment of the spinal cord varies with the region of the cord [5]. They are most numerous in the thoracolumbar segment and least numerous in the upper thoracic segment.…”

Pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of intermittent claudication in patients with lumbar canal stenosis

“…In the 19 th century, Adamkiewicz [13,14] and Kadyi [15,16] clarified the particularly important role of radicular arteries in the blood supply of the spinal cord. After that, much work was devoted to the vasculature of the spinal cord [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] , but no research placed emphasis on the supply to the nerve roots until the midtwentieth century. Corbin described anatomic details of radicular arteries and classified them into three groups: artères radiculo-grères, artères radiculo-piemeriennes, and artères radiculo-medullares [25] .…”