A comprehensive visual report of urodynamic study in rats with spinal cord injury

Abstract

Objectives: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most debilitating and expensive traumatic conditions. Chronic complications after SCI have a particularly negative impact on patients’ functional independence and quality of life. Urodynamic study (UDS) provides a quantitative assessment of lower urinary tract function in these patients. In many fields, animal models are considered a precursor to clinical trials, so research using laboratory animals play a major role in knowledge acquisition.

Materials and methods: Twelve female Wistar rats (13 weeks old, 220-270 g) were divided randomly into 2 groups: sham or SCI. The sham-operated group underwent a laminectomy at T9-T10 without any spinal cord damage, while the SCI group underwent a complete transection at the T9-T10 vertebral level. We performed cystometry in all animals at the end of the fourth week. In this article, we visualize all procedures for catheter implementation and UDS in animals for the first time at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, using a locally developed animal UDS device.

Results: The UDS results showed that the bladders in the SCI group were overactive and that peak and baseline pressures increased significantly in rats with SCI when compared with the sham group (p < 0.05 for all). Conversely, significant reductions in bladder compliance and intercontraction interval were observed in the SCI group (p < 0.05 for both).

Conclusions: This comprehensive visual report will be very useful to all researchers in the field of urology. Furthermore, the measurable variables of the UDS device have been described in this study.

Keywords

Spinal cord injury / Bladder function / Cystometry / Urodynamics / Rats

Acknowledgment

None.

Statement of ethics

This study was approved by local ethical committee of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (IR.TBZMED.VCR.REC.1398.306). All the experimental protocols for animal studies were conducted in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Funding source

This study received a financial support from the Student Research Committee of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (grant no. 63880).

Author contributions

SH, NA: Participated in research design; HS-P, NA: Participated in manuscript writing; SH, HS-P: Conducted the research; ASV: Provided reagents and instrumentation; JM: Participated in data analysis.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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