Spinal Surgery and Evoked Potentials
Most spinal surgery procedures are considered major operations. Whenever surgeons operate near the spinal cord, care must be taken to prevent avoidable complications and errors. One way this is done is by measuring the patients evoked potentials during the surgical procedure.
Evoked potentials are measurements of the electrical response when a nerve is stimulated. The most common
type of stimulus is called a somatosensory evoked potential or SSEP. This is done by stimulating a nerve in the hand (for instance, the median nerve) and measuring how this moves from the hand, through the arm, up the spinal cord, and to the head, where the signal is recorded by electrodes that have taped to the skin.
The hope is that a change in signal will allow the surgeons and anesthesiologists to make immediate changes to prevent catastrophic damage to the spinal cord.
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