چكيده به لاتين
Spinal cord injury causes bladder disorders which can affect the quality of patient’s everyday life. Furthermore, it may result in urinary tract infection and kidney problems. Electrical stimulation of the pudendal nerve has been proposed as a method for alleviating these injuries. In this study, we used electrical stimulation of the pudendal nerve for control of bladder voiding. The adjustable stimulation parameters were frequency (3~40 Hz), amplitude (300 ~700 μA) and pulse width (300 μs). Experiments were conducted on 15 anesthetized rats. The cystometry comparison between healthy rats and those with spinal cord injury shows that the problem of bladder voiding is due to the absence of bladder contraction reflex. The electrical stimulation of pudendal nerve with an appropriate stimulation parameters shows an increase in bladder capacity and bladder voiding.
The results show that the amplitude modulation was more suitable than other modulation techniques, for incontinence control and bladder voiding. Different stimulation patterns were used in this study. The results show that the best performance for incontinence control could be achieved using a stimulation pattern with 5-second on and 25-second off pulses with the pulse amplitude of 300 μA, pulse width of 300 μs, and 5 Hz frequency. Using this stimulation pattern, the bladder capacity increased by more than 10%. For effective bladder voiding, stimulation pattern with 5-second on, 3-second off pulses, pulse amplitude of 500 μA, pulse width of 300 μs, and 20 Hz frequency, caused bladder voiding of about 93% with respect to the initial bladder volume.
It can be concluded that the stimulation pattern has significant effect on the bladder capacity and bladder voiding. Moreover, the results of this study show that the bladder inhibition and bladder voiding can be achieved by the electrical stimulation of the pudendal nerve.
Keywords: electrical stimulation of Pudendal nerve, amplitude modulation, bladder volume, drain control.
