Effect of spinal cord preconditioning on paraplegia during cross-clamping of the thoracic aorta

Paraplegia is a devastating complication of operations for thoracic or thoracoabdominal aneurysms. Preconditioning the brain with sublethal ischemia induces resistance to subsequent ordinarily lethal ischemia (ischemic tolerance). We investigated whether ischemic tolerance could be induced by preconditioning canine spinal cord. The role of heat-shock proteins (HSP) in this process was investigated.In experiment 1, the preconditioning group (n =...