Abstract
Chronic low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension remain challenging clinical issues after severe spinal cord injury (SCI), affecting health, rehabilitation, and quality of life. We previously reported that targeted lumbosacral spinal cord epidural stimulation (scES) could promote stand and step functions and restore voluntary movement in patients with chronic motor complete SCI. This study addresses the effects of targeted scES for cardiovascular function (CV-scES) in individuals with severe SCI who suffer from chronic hypotension. We tested the hypothesis that CV-scES can increase resting blood pressure and attenuate chronic hypotension in individuals with chronic cervical SCI. Four research participants with chronic cervical SCI received an implant of a 16-electrode array on the dura (L1–S1 cord segments, T11–L1 vertebrae). Individual-specific CV-scES configurations (anode and cathode electrode selection, voltage, frequency, and pulse width) were identified to maintain systolic blood pressure within targeted normative ranges without skeletal muscle activity of the lower extremities as assessed by electromyography. These individuals completed five 2-h sessions using CV-scES in an upright, seated position during measurement of blood pressure and heart rate. Noninvasive continuous blood pressure was measured from a finger cuff by plethysmograph technique. For each research participant there were statistically significant increases in mean arterial pressure in response to CV-scES that was maintained within normative ranges. This result was reproducible over the five sessions with concomitant decreases or no changes in heart rate using individual-specific CV-scES that was modulated with modest amplitude changes throughout the session. Our study shows that stimulating dorsal lumbosacral spinal cord can effectively and safely activate mechanisms to elevate blood pressures to normal ranges from a chronic hypotensive state in humans with severe SCI with individual-specific CV-scES.
Highlights
Cardiovascular dysfunction is a leading cause of death in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and has a significant negative impact throughout their lifetime
In this study we proposed to use targeted spinal cord epidural stimulation (scES) optimized for solely cardiovascular function (CV-scES) to provide a unique way to address cardiovascular dysfunction experienced in individuals with SCI
We hypothesized that CV-scES at spinal cord segments L1–S1 with specific targeted configurations can increase resting blood pressure and attenuate orthostatic hypotension in individuals with chronic cervical SCI
Summary
Cardiovascular dysfunction is a leading cause of death in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and has a significant negative impact throughout their lifetime. These studies demonstrated effects of scES on altering the excitability of the spinal neural networks to process sensory and supraspinal inputs to improve motor behavior, and highlighted the importance of optimization of the stimulation configurations, i.e., electrode set, frequency, and intensity, to activate the neuronal pools to achieve targeted tasks and the stimulation parameters were specific to individuals During these studies we observed in two individuals who had orthostatic hypotension, blood pressure was elevated and symptoms of orthostatic hypotension were prevented during standing and stepping (unpublished observations). We hypothesized that CV-scES at spinal cord segments L1–S1 with specific targeted configurations can increase resting blood pressure and attenuate orthostatic hypotension in individuals with chronic cervical SCI
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