Phrenic nerve transfer in the treatment of brachial plexus avulsion : an experimental study of nerve regeneration and muscle morphology in rats.

• The regeneration of motor and sensory neurons and the morphological changes of the target muscle after phrenic nerve transfer were investigated in adult rats. Six months following nerve transfer, 326.0 +/- 16.31 phrenic motoneurons regenerated into musculocutaneous nerve, which is not different from the normal number of phrenic motoneurons. The regenerated motoneurons exhibited a 14% nonsignificant hypertrophy. Of the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, 255.8 +/- 45.26 regenerated, which was significantly lower than the number of normal phrenic DRG neurons. The regenerated phrenic DRG neurons showed a 24% close-to-significant atrophy. The target muscle fiber morphology changed considerably after reinnervation. The present results suggest that the phrenic nerve has very good regenerative ability in terms of its motoneurons and a relatively insufficient sensory neuronal regeneration.

Keyword

Animals

Brachial Plexus Neuropathies/*surgery

Disease Models; Animal

Female

Motor Neurons/ultrastructure

Muscle Fibers/*ultrastructure

Muscle; Skeletal/physiology/ultrastructure

Musculocutaneous Nerve/ultrastructure

Nerve Regeneration/*physiology

Nerve Transfer/*methods

Phrenic Nerve/*transplantation

Rats

Rats; Sprague-Dawley

Reference Values

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)