Experimental Research On Nerve Graft Segment With Vascular Bundle Implantation In Repairing Peripheral Nerve Defect

The thick and segmental peripheral nerve defects have always been very difficult to be repaired. Now it has been identified that the nerve auto grafting with blood vessel is much better than the simple nerve alltografting to repair the thick and segmental peripheral nerve defect, especially when the recipient is scar tissue. Because the vascular bundle grafting into bone, skeletal muscle and hypoderm has been thought to be an effective method to reconstruct blood circulation. We plant vascular bundle into the free nerve segment in order to study its revascularization process and relationship with neuranageresis. 50 New Zeland rabbits were used to creat 25mm defects on the sciatic nerve bylaterally, the right defects were filled by the left free herve segments with vascular bundle (from femoral artary and vein), and the left defect as control were filled with the right free nerve segment without vascular bundle. 3 rabbits were killed in 3, 7, 10,14, 2land 45days after operation, the whole nerve vascularization process was observed, all sample were assesed electrophysiologically and histologically. 7 The results showed the all grafted blood vessel kept open after 3, 7, 10, 14 and 21 days of operation. The fine vessel braneh could be found on epineurium and periheurium in 3 days, the capillary network has been formed in the midportion of the nerve segment and spread toward two sides in 7 days, from 14 to 21 days, the capillary network spreaded through the whole grafts and conrected with the capillaries from the two ends. Wheras there were only a few capillies on the epineurium of the contrel. The dertermination of N-MCV showed that there was no obvious difference between the two groups after 4 weeks, but after 6 weeks the difference became great. The regenerated nerofiber in the vascular bunde group was thicker that that in the control group, and the amount of motor end-plate in the former was greater that than in the latter. This study showed it was concluded that the nerve autografting with vascular bundle can help to reconstruct blood circulation and improve the neuranagenesis.