Experimental studies in chickens on the initial nutrition of tendon grafts

A study of nutrition of various tendon graft preparations in adult chickens (up to 2 weeks after grafting), using tritiated proline and a trichloracetic acid extraction technique which separated the free and metabolized amino acid fractions, suggests that diffusion of nutrients is an important process in the initial nutrition of tendon grafts, that tendon grafts are metabolically active and viable structures, that adhesions which are frequently associated with tendon grafts do not appear to be essential to the nutrition of grafts, and that tendon grafts within fibrous pseudosheaths are nourished as effectively as grafts within synovial sheaths.