HYPERBARIC OXYGEN TREATMENT IN SPINAL CORD INJURY——EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL STUDIES

Fifty male New Zealand rabbits were used. The ventral impact method ofproducing reversible cord injury was carried out with a force of 161 g-cm. 28 animalswere assigned to the hyperbaric oxygen (HBO)group, and 22 to the control group.Cortical evoked potential (CEP) was adopted as the method of observation at 6 hours, 1,2, 3, and 8 days after injury and pathologic. Examination was done. Measuremen of CEPand the recovery patterns of CEP were compared between the two groups. The HBOgroup showed a CEP recovery rate of 33.51% while in the control group the rate was2.14% with statistical significance (P<0.01). Electron microscopic examination showedthat in the HBO group, normal morphology of nervous fibers could be seen with intactcytoplasmic and nuclear membrane. The outlie of the mitochondria was clear. No obviousswelling of the axon and the sheath could be detected. Clinically there were 35 cases ofacute spinal cord injury undergoing hyperbaric oxygen treatment and among these 19 weredue to fracture-dislocation of the cervical spine and 16 due to fracture-dislocation of thethoraco-lumbar spine. Patients were kept under 2.5 ATA with pure oxygen mask, for 90minutes with interval of 3-4 hours and 3 treatments constituted one course. Out of the 35cases admitted for HBO treatment, 26 incomplete paraplegia patients showed complete orpartial recovery while there was no improvement in neural function in nine cases of com-plete paraplegia according to Frankel classification, there were 4 cases with improvementfrom A to D, 4 cases from B to D, 4 cases from B to E and 2 cases from C to D, im-plying marked improvement in neural function.