[Small-gap bridging technology for peripheral nerve injury repair and the new sleeve material]

The peripheral nerve injury is a common injury in clinical practice. For centuries, traditional epineurial and perineurial suture techniques have been used to repair nerve transection after peripheral nerve injuries. As there are several types of nerve fibers in neural stump, accurate and effective regeneration of the fibers is limited. The outcome of repairing nerve injury has little improvement till now. Meanwhile , the selective regeneration of peripheral nerve fibers has been gradually confirmed by researchers. The limitation of traditional epineurial and perineurial suture techniques and the phenomenon of selective regeneration of nerve fibers had inspired us with the creative idea: the small-gap bridging suture techniques, which might take the place of the conventional epineurial and perineurial suture methods. We had made a series of detailed studies about this new method, devised a simple and reliable suture method and established an animal model of small-gap bridging suture technique. By observing peripheral nerve regeneration effect of nerve suture with small gap bridging by different gap lengths, we found that the optimal gap was between 1 to 3 mm, developed an artificial conduit with good biocompatibility and gradually applied this new conduit to mammals and primate animal experiments and clinical trials. All the studies obtained reliable results, which confirmed that the small-gap bridging suture was suitable to replace the traditional epineurium suture repairing the peripheral nerve injury. In 2010, this series of research gained the First Prize of Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the Ministry of Education.