The biomechanical response of spinal cord tissue to uniaxial loading

The spinal cord is an integral component of the spinal column and is prone to physical injury during trauma or more long-term pathological insults. The development of computational models to simulate the cord-column interaction during trauma is important in developing a proper understanding of the injury mechanism. Such models would be invaluable in seeking both preventive strategies that reduce the propensity for injury and identifying specific treatment regimes. However, these developments are hampered by the limited information available on the structural and mechanical properties of this soft tissue owing to the difficulty in handling this material in a cadaveric situation. The purpose of the present paper is to report the rapid deterioration in the quality of the tissues once excised, which provides a further challenge to the successful elucidation of the structural properties of the tissue. In particular, the tangent modulus of the tissue is seen to increase sharply over a period of 72 h.