TOPOGRAFIA DO CONE MEDULAR EM UM GATO MOURISCO, Herpailurus yagouaroundi (Severtzow, 1858)(FELIDAE)

Since the caudal anesthesia was first proposed in 1926 many techniques were developed to anesthethize the lumbar and sacral nerves. Such methods for epidural anesthesia require knowledge of the relative anatomical regions. The objetive of the present study was to determine the topographic anatomy of the jaguarundi medullar cone as a morphological basis for application of anesthesis techniques. One adult female jaguarondi that perished by natural death has been obtained form the Sabia Zoo Park, Uberlândia, MG, Brazil and conducted to tha Wild Animals Laboratory. The animal was fixes in 10% formalin solution. Following skin incision, muscles of the vertebral column were removed and the vertebral arcs sectioned for the visualization of hte spinal cord and its wrappers. Epidural anesthesic drug in the medullar cone. The medullar cone in this jaguarundi startet in the sixth lumbar vertebra (L6) and ended in the second sacral vertebra (S2); the spinal cord length was 50mm. The corporal length of this feline measured 473mm. The best region to perform the pelvic anesthesia in a jaguarundi is between the vertebra L6 and S2.