Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

This study focuses on hemorrhage within the spinal cord after a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). The severity of this bleeding is associated with worse neurologic outcomes in acute SCI patients, where the blood and its breakdown products can be toxic to the injured cord and have negative downstream consequences. Acute SCI patients receive two routine clinical therapies, which may unintentionally worsen the bleeding within the injured spinal cord. The goal of the first clinical therapy is to increase an individual's mean arterial pressure to maintain adequate blood flow to the spinal cord and prevent further damage. However, this increase in blood flow may also unintentionally worsen bleeding within the injured spinal cord. Acute SCI patients are also at risk of developing blood clots due to their immobility after injury. As a result, the second routine clinical therapy is to give acute SCI patients anticoagulants, also known as blood thinners, to prevent the formation of blood clots. However, by slowing down the clotting process, these blood thinners may increase the severity of any bleeding in the injured cord. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine whether the combination of these two routine clinical therapies unintentionally exacerbates bleeding within the spinal cord after SCI in a pig model. We have developed the techniques to detect and measure the extent of spinal cord bleeding using ultrasound imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, and histology of the spinal cord at seven days post-injury. The amount of bleeding after injury will be compared between the animals that received blood pressure management and/or anticoagulation therapy and those that did not receive any treatment after SCI. The results from this preclinical study will inform clinicians on how these two clinical practices could be modified to reduce the risk of spinal cord bleeding, ultimately improving the potential for recovery after SCI.