Anaesthesia Fundamentals | Anatomy | Spinal Cord, Major Ascending and Descending Pathways

Spinal Cord, Major Ascending and Descending Pathways
Session Overview
Description
This session covers the anatomy of the spinal cord, and focuses on the spinal nerves, and the nerve pathways ascending and descending, through its structure. It also covers the blood supply to the spinal cord.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Identify the macroscopic structure of the spinal cord
• Identify the structure of the spinal nerves
• Explain the coronal section of the spinal cord
• Recall the major motor and sensory pathways
• Describe the blood supply of the spinal cord

For a number of reasons it is important for anaesthetists to have a working knowledge of the spinal cord (Fig 1).

A good working knowledge will help facilitate the following:

• An understanding of pain pathways to enable rational management of acute and chronic pain
• Safe spinal anaesthesia
• Allows the anaesthetist to perform effective preoperative assessment of patients with spinal cord lesions
• An understanding of symptoms caused by various spinal cord lesions e.g. disc prolapse, anterior spinal artery syndrome, hemisection of the spinal cord