Comparison of fascial flap and vein conduit for peripheral nerve injury repair in rats

Peripheral nerve injures are common in clinical practice that includes from compression injury to complete disruption of nerve trunk. After injury nerves can grow and repair spontaneously, early end to end anastomosis is first choice for repair but only 50% of nerve fiber would be physiologically accurate and effective, thus several techniques for repair of nerve injury are introduced including combination of nerve transplant with silicon tubes, use of biologic and synthetic tubes for nerve conduit. In this Exprimental study, 20 rats with the same weight were selected and kept in the same condition. The left sciatic nerve of them was cut and were divided in two groups.In the first group the facial flap method for repair of nerve injury was used. In the second group vein conduit method was used as standard method. Histological nerve repair was assessed after 45 days and the intact right sciatic nerve was used as control. Repair of nerve injury in proximal, mid and distal portion of nerve in facial flap method was more effective than vein conduit (P<0.05). Repair of nerve injury in proximal, mid and distal portion had no difference compared with control group (p>0.05). Repair of nerve injury with facial flap method is more effective than standard method and can be used as a new method for nerve repair.