The recovery of peripheral nerves following tissue expansion

A rat sciatic nerve model has been used to study the response of nerves to tissue expansion and their recovery at intervals up to 100 days using electrophysiology and histological methods. Tissue expansion has been shown to increase nerve length by 32% of which half remained at 100 days. Following tissue expansion the mean conduction velocity of the sciatic nerve was reduced to 30.0 +/- 1.35 m/s which represented 60.3% of control values, by 100 days the conduction velocity had almost returned to normal. Histological examination showed the cause of the reduction in function to be due to segmental demyelination without axonal degeneration, these changes returned towards normal during the recovery period but were not completely reversed by 100 days.