Scientific articleEvaluation of a Nerve Fusion Technique With Polyethylene Glycol in a Delayed Setting After Nerve Injury
Section snippets
Experimental animals
Adult female Sprague-Dawley rats (250 g, Charles River Laboratories, Wilmington, MA) were used in this study. All experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Experimental design
Thirty female Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into 6 groups. A sciatic nerve injury model was used and all rats underwent complete nerve transection with a delayed nerve repair at 1 of 3 different time points (1, 8, or 24 hours). The times were chosen out
Electrophysiology data
Compound action potentials were evaluated at 2 time points: before injury and after repair. Electrophysiological studies showed that preinjury CAPs were present in all animals (n = 30) (Fig. 1). The CAP amplitudes were similar between experimental and control animals before complete transection of the sciatic nerve. After transection and delayed repair of the sciatic nerve at each group’s respective time point, no CAPs were recorded in any control animals. By contrast, CAP conduction was
Discussion
The current study provides electrophysiological, behavioral, and histological data for outcomes of PEG fusion in a rodent nerve injury model when performed up to 24 hours after injury. Further studies are needed to evaluate whether PEG can improve clinical outcomes and whether PEG improves outcomes even after 24 hours. The study contributes to a growing body of PEG fusion research that has traditionally focused on repair within minutes of injury.1, 2, 3, 4, 19
Our experience with PEG fusion in
Acknowledgments
This report was presented as a top paper at the 34th Annual Adrian E. Flatt Residents and Fellows Conference in Hand Surgery at the 2016 American Society for Surgery of the Hand annual meeting.
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This work was supported by the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant numbers OR120216 and NIH EB001744. The toluidine blue staining and analysis were performed in part through the use of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Cell Imaging Shared Resource (supported by NIH grants CA68485, DK20593, DK58404, DK59637, and EY08126).