FIG. 2.

Surgical decompression promotes tissue sparing after spinal cord injury (SCI). (A) Axial spinal cord cross sections of the lesion epicenter stained with eriochrome cyanine R and Cresyl violet were examined at 250-μm intervals. (B) Histological analysis of spared tissue showed that durotomy plus myelotomy resulted in significantly increased neural tissue sparing overall compared with the SCI alone group (p < 0.0001), while the effect of durotomy alone did not reach statistical significance (p > 0.05). Analysis of spared gray matter revealed that both durotomy alone and durotomy plus myelotomy resulted in significantly increased sparing compared with traumatic SCI (tSCI) only (p < 0.01). Analysis of spared white matter tracts showed that durotomy plus myelotomy significantly increased sparing compared with durotomy alone (p < 0.01) and control animals (p < 0.0001). **p < 0.01, ****p < 0.0001. Color image is available online.