Preoperative stress conditioning prevents paralysis after experimental aortic surgery: increased heat shock protein content is associated with ischemic tolerance of the spinal cord.

Background: All forms of surgical therapy are stressful and injurious. The problems of paralysis, renal dysfunction, and colonic ischemia associated with aortic occlusion are due to acute ischemia-reperfusion injury at the cellular level. Acute-anterior spinal cord ischemia is the most devastating outcome of these iatrogenic-ischemic events.