Acute Paraplegia After General Anesthesia

• Main Authors: Gholam Hossein Ghaedi, Alireza Saeedi, Shadi Salehpour, Mohammadebrahim Yarmohammadi, Younes Roohani, Alireza Khalaj, Siamak Afshinmajd, Mehran Heydari Seradj
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2011-08-01
• Series: Acta Medica Iranica
• Subjects: Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy; General Anesthesia Complications; Acute Paraplegia
• Online Access: http://journals.tums.ac.ir/upload_files/pdf/19362.pdf

Acute paraplegia is a rare but catastrophic complication of surgeries performed on aorta and corrective operations of vertebral column. Trauma to spinal cord after spinal anesthesia and ischemia of spinal cord also may lead to acute paraplegia. Acute paraplegia as a complication of general anesthesia in surgeries performed on sites other than aorta and vertebral column is very rare. Here we present a 56 year old woman with acute paraplegia due to spinal cord infarction after laparoscopic cholecystectomy under general anesthesia probably caused by atherosclerosis of feeding spinal arteries and ischemia of spinal cord after reduction of blood flow possibly due to hypotension during general anesthesia.