Twenty-Four Cervical Cord Trauma

After getting the permission from the ethical committee of the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization and consent from the donors’ family under the ethical rule adhered to the declaration of the Helsinki in 2008, twenty-four cervical spinal cords from the human cadavers were excised for the mechanical measurements. Candidate donors were screened and were rejected if any history of the brain or spinal cord trauma was found or if more than 10 h had elapsed since death. Cases in which infectious diseases were involved were excluded for safety reasons. The mean age of the donors was 72.28±7.29 years old. After the death of the individuals, the cords were excised form the cervical parts of the cadavers’ body and kept into a special package made for the transporting of the transplanted organs at 4 ºC. The spinal cord was transported into the mechanical testing laboratory and washed by solution of 0.90% w/v of NaCl with the …show more content…
Using the surgical scalpel, the tissues were cut into the proper size for the compressive testing. To diminish the tissue degradation, the specimens were all cut as soon as possible, rather each specimen was tested first and then another specimen was extracted and cut. This procedure although took so much time from us, was important to prevent the tissue from losing some degree of its stiffness and to prevent dehydration. The commercial testing machines equipped with 50 kgf load cells (DBBP-50, Bongshin Company, Seongnam, Korea) to provide a very accurate load measurement for further calculations. All tests were carried out at room temperature of 22ºC and the humidity level of 52% (AcuRite, California, United States). Although the authors did their best to provide the most suitable condition of testing to minimize the effect of tissue degradation and experimental time, the conditions of testing, i.e., temperature,