ABSTRACT
Efforts to improve functional recovery following nerve injury and repair have included
studies of sutureless repairs. The rat sciatic nerve was used as an experimental model
to compare the efficacy of laser nerve repairs with standard microsuture repairs.
Electrophysiologic (Compound Action Potential), quantitative morphometric, and behavioral
(toe spread) measurements were used for assessment, and tensile strength of the repairs
was also determined.
Electrophysiologic studies showed that microsuture-repaired nerves had significantly
faster conduction velocities, but the areas of the waveforms and peak amplitudes showed
no significant differences between the two repair groups. Axon counts revealed significant
differences in the suture group proximal to the repair site, contrasted with laser
repairs. Toe spread evaluations, carried out at three day intervals, demonstrated
a significant difference between the two methods of repair in only three out of 22
test dates: in these isolated cases, the suture group measurements were superior.
The tensile strength findings confirmed that, at four days, microsuture repair was
significantly stronger but thereafter, there was no difference between the two nerve
repair techniques.
