Effects and comparison of boric acid and steroid on perineural adhesion and scar tissue formation in A rat model

Epineural and extraneural scar tissue formation after surgery is one of the most important factors that negatively affect the outcome of peripheral nerve surgery. Scar tissue and adhesions that develop in the postoperative period cause pain that does not pass along the axis of the nerve and functional loss. Many surgical methods, pharmacological agents and chemicals have been used to prevent epineural scar tissue formation, but satisfactory results have not been obtained in clinical applications. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the combined effect of boric acid and steroid on epineural scar tissue and adhesion formation after epineurectomy in rat sciatic nerve in a mature rat model. In the study, 32 Sprague-Dawley female rats were used. After the skin incisions, the sciatic nerve was carefully dissected and removed from the gluteal muscles, with the control group on the right side and the other groups on the left side 0.5 cm circumferential epinurectomy was applied to each nerve. No procedure was applied to the control group after epinurectomy. 3% boric acid solution was prepared and applied to the local boric acid group after epinurectomy. 8 mg / kg / day boric acid was calculated for each rat in the early postoperative period for the systemic boric acid group and the average daily drinking water amount was taken into consideration. 0.7 mg / kg of steroid (dexamethasone) was administered intraperitoneally to the systemic steroid group in the postoperative period. Local boric acid dose was administered once during epinurectomy. Systemically applied boric acid and steroid were started in the early postoperative period and applied for 3 weeks. Rats were sacrificed at the end of the 3rd week and macroscopic and histopathological examination was performed. As a result in the study; it was found statistically that local boric acid negatively affected nerve regeneration, fibrosis and adhesion.