[Tissue engineering of peripheral nerve]

The use in traumatic peripheral nerve pathology of conduits of different materials to connect the severed nerve ends and facilitate nerve fibers connection has not so far led to very satisfactory results. This paper presents preliminary results on the use of tissue engineering techniques to facilitate nerve regeneration using those conduits. Research carried out by clinical, histological, histochemical and neurophysiological methods shows a higher degree of nerve regeneration regarding the controls when a fibrin-agarose biomaterial is introduced in the conduit and even more when stem cells from the fat of the experimental animal are added to the fibrin-agarose biomaterial. These results could contribute to develop in the future better effective therapeutic results in traumatic peripheral nerve pathology.