The involvement of cytokines in the inflammatory process and their presence in the CSF raises the potential for an additional benefit to CSF drainage which has not yet been explored in humans. Kunihara and colleagues demonstrated a significant increase in the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-8 (IL-8) within the spinal cords of New Zealand white rabbits subjected to aortic cross-clamping (Kunihara et al., 2000). They went on to show that levels of IL-8 (in addition to other inflammatory cytokines such as IL-10 and IL-6) were significantly elevated in the CSF of human patients undergoing TAAA repair. Interestingly, a patient in this series who suffering ischemic paraplegia after the TAAA had the most dramatically increased and sustained levels of IL-8 within the CSF (Kunihara et al., 2001). It has been proposed by these authors and others that the drainage of such pro-inflammatory CSF cytokines away from the spinal cord may itself be neuroprotective (Kunihara et al., 2001; Tang et al., 1996; Svensson et al., 1998). This hypothesis, however, has not been further evaluated in traumatic or non-traumatic spinal cord injuries. As yet, it is unclear how much CSF would need to be drained in order to achieve an "effective" reduction in local cytokine concentration.