Sural nerve defects after nerve biopsy or nerve transfer as a sensory regeneration model for peripheral nerve conduit implantation.

Nerve repair after injury can be effectively accomplished by direct suture approximation of the proximal and distal segments. This is more successful if coadaptation can be achieved without tension. Currently, the gold standard repair of larger deficits is the transplantation of an autologous sensory sural nerve graft. However, a significant disadvantage of this technique is the inevitable donor morbidity (sensory loss, neuroma and scar formation) after harvesting of the sural nerve. Moreover, limitation of autologous donor nerve length and fixed diameter of the available sural nerve are major drawbacks of current autograft treatment. Another approach that was introduced for nerve repair is the implantation of alloplastic nerve tubes made of, for example, poly-L-lactide. In these, nerve stumps of the transected nerves are surgically bridged using the biosynthetic conduit. A number of experimental studies, primarily in rodents, indicate axonal regeneration and remyelination after implantation of various conduits. However, only limited clinical studies with conduit implantation have been performed in acute peripheral nerve injuries particularly on digital nerves. Clinical transfer of animal studies, which can be carefully calibrated for site and extent of injury, to humans is difficult to interpret due to the intrinsic variability in human nerve injuries. This prevents effective quantification of improvement and induces bias in the study. Therefore, standardization of lesion/repair in human studies is warranted. Here we propose to use sural nerve defects, induced due to nerve graft harvesting or from diagnostic nerve biopsies as a model site to enable standardization of nerve conduit implantation. This would help better with the characterization of the implants and its effectiveness in axonal regeneration and remyelination. Nerve regeneration can be assessed, for example, by recovery of sensation, measured non-invasively by threshold to von Frey filaments and cold allodynia. Moreover, the implantation of nerve conduits may not only serve as a model to examine nerve repair, but it could also prevent neuroma formation, which is a major morbidity of sural nerve extraction.