10 IJBMRF20151919 S.B.Arjun

Lumbar puncture is an essential procedure in the armamentarium of clinicians, and its complications may result if carried out without a proper understanding of the anatomical 2 implications . The conus medullaris or "medullary cone” is the terminal end of the spinal cord and then the spinal nerves continue as dangling nerve roots called cauda equina. There are changes in 3 position of conus medullaris with gender and race . Before the invention of modern imaging techniques, scientists studied the termination of spinal cord by actually dissecting cadavers and concluded that the termination of spinal cord was at lower border of L1.However, there were some limitations such as shrinkage,distortion, skeletonisation, poor positioning of specimens, aged population, significant spinal disorders which made these findings inapplicable to living human beings.