A Prospective Clinical Evaluation of Autogenous Vein Grafts Used as a Nerve Conduit for Distal Sensory Nerve Defects of 3 cm or Less

Repairing nerve gaps by vein conduits filled with lipoaspirate-derived entire adipose tissue hinders nerve regeneration

“…Among conduits of biological origin, a consensus seems to exist regarding the use of autologous veins because of their ubiquitous availability as well their distensibility facilitating the fashioning of guides of appropri-ate size (Chiu and Strauch, 1990;Terzis and Kostas, 2007). Also regarding luminal fillers, the second key element in bio-engineered nerve guides, a plea has been for made for new approaches, and these are currently being explored worldwide and, similarly to conduits, both biological and synthetic mate-rial may be sought (Yan et al, 2009).…”

Mechanical properties of acellular peripheral nerve

“…Substantially larger segmental defects could be reconstructed, and the morbidity of harvesting would be eliminated. Several types of materials have been proposed as peripheral nerve substitutes [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], including autologous materials such as vein and muscle strips, synthetic materials such as polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid, non-autologous biological materials such as acellular peripheral nerve allograft, and conduits made of collagen, laminin, fibronectin, and alginate.…”

Nerve regeneration over a 25 mm gap in rat sciatic nerves using tubes containing blood vessels: the possibility of clinical application

“…Mackinnon et al reported the successful repair of 3 ± 5 cm gaps in primates [13,16]. Other studies have shown that satisfactory results follow repair of human digital nerve gaps of less than 3 cm using unvascularised tubes, such as autogenous veins or biodegradable PGA (polyglycolic acid) tubes [3,15,23,14,28]. A gap of 25 mm in rats corresponds to a longer distance in man, and so gaps in nerves could be bridged over a longer distance using tubes containing vessels.…”