ABSTRACT
From May 1981 to September 1983. experimental study of the effect of buried nerve endings into muscles on the recovery of its motor functions was carried out in our hospital with 40 robust rabbits of both-sexes divided into two groups. In group A. left common peroneal nerve was cut off at the relatively deep site of myoneural junction and divided into three bundles, which were separately buried into long extensor muscle of digits, anterior tibial muscle and long peroneal muscle. For group B. a piece of 1.2cm cut from left common peroneal nerve and another piece of 1.4cm cut from right common per-oneal nerve were freely transplanted to the left-side muscles in the same way as in group A. Experimental results showed that the motor function of the muscles transplanted with nerve ending started to recover in two months after operation, and that the muscle power reached more than the 4th grading and electric irritation could induce muscle contraction at the 6th month after operation. Electromyogra-phic examination showed mixed disturbing potential. The new motor end-plates could be found on his-tological examination. In one clinical case follow-up for 6 months was made post-operatively and the recovering muscle power was fairly satisfactory.
ABSTRACT
Twenty-one rabbits were randomly divided into three groups: experimental group-filling vein with two neural segments being 0.3cm long to bridge 4cm defect of common peroneal nerve, control group-bridging vein directly to the 4cm defect of common peroneal nerve, auto-nerve-grafting group-cutting off a segment (4cm long) from common peroneal nerve and grafting it inversely.After 25 weeks, morphological, electrophysiological and histological examinations were undertaken, which revealed that the experimental group was most similar to the auto-nerve-grafting group in recovery of motion of the limbs, action potential of muscle, nerve conductive velocity, and regenerating density of nerve fibers and axons. It was a failure in control group. Satisfactory results were also achieved in 2 patients with defect of ulnar nerve treated by filling vein with two neural segments. It suggests that our method is feasible.