Histological and morphometric characteristics of donor nerve grafts commonly used in peripheral nerve reconstruction

The functional recovery of peripheral nerve injury are dependent on the nature, location and severity of any trauma. When a nerve has been injured, the goal of surgical repair is generally to reapproximate the ends of the injured nerve. Nerve grafts are generally portions of a sensory nerve that are harvested from the cutaneous nerves of the extremities, head and neck. Most commonly, sural nerve, greater auricular nerve, the superficial radial nerve, medial cutaneous nerves of the arm and forearm, posterior and lateral cutaneous nerves of the thigh, lateral cutaneous nerve of the forearm, superficial ulnar nerve, superficial peroneal nerve have been used for nerve grafting. Although there have been extensive histological studies on donor nerves such as sural and greater auricular nerve, only limited studies on the other potential donor nerves have been reported. For this reason, we aimed to study the histological and morphometrical charecterictics (axon number, number of fascicles, total area of the connective tissue, total area of the fassicles, fassicle/connective tissue ratio) of the donor nerves commonly used in the peripheral nerve surgery. A total number of 12 donor nerves of 13 cadavers were included to the present study. Routine histological procedures were done, the samples were mounted in paraffin, and the blocs were cut at 5-?m thickness. The cross-sections were stained with hematoxylin-eosin, Masson-Tricrome, Woelke?s myelin stain. Preparats were analyzed by image analysis system. We found that each nerve has specific charecterictics. We suggest that these histologic and morphometric charecterictics of the donor nerves should be remembered during selection of the appropriate donor nerve for reconstruction of recipient nerve. Keywords: donor nerve, microanatomy, peripheral nerve