The Spinal Cord: Gross Anatomy and Blood Supply

Key points

• • The spinal cord runs from the base of the brain to about the first or second lumbar vertebra in the adult, ending as the cone-shaped conus medullaris.
• • It has cervical and lumbar swellings where the nerves for the limbs arise, and it gives off thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves.
• • Below the cord, the lumbar and sacral nerve roots hang down as the cauda equina, the target of a safe lumbar puncture.
• • In cross section a butterfly of central grey matter (nerve cell bodies) is surrounded by white matter made of ascending and descending tracts.
• • It is supplied by one anterior and two posterior spinal arteries, helped by feeder vessels; the front supply is vulnerable, causing the anterior cord syndrome.