Experimental microneurosurgery of the trigeminal ganglion and ophthalmic-maxillary nerve in the rat: subtemporal fossa approach.

In the researches of the innervation relationship between trigeminal ganglion and a particular structure in the head, it is usually necessary to apply neural tracers into the ganglion for anterograde nerve tracing study or perform bilateral trigeminal nerve transecting for degeneration study. A common surgical approach for exposing these structures in the rat was to remove a piece of skull and a portion of brain. While investigating the innervation of rat's pineal gland from its trigeminal ganglion, we used a subtemporal fossa approach, whereby the mortality of the animal was remarkably reduced and the contamination of the intracranial structures by the tracer was proved to be least. This is the first description of bilateral surgeries of the trigeminal ganglion and trigeminal nerve in rat using extracranial approach. Detailed surgical procedures were presented and their advantages discussed.