Hi Rowen.

I recently published a review & methodology on sciatic nerve injury that includes an overview of methods used to evaluate regeneeration and recovery. Here's the link:

Article Sciatic nerve injury: A simple and subtle model for investig...

Thank you very much Professor Patterson. I'll study this most interesting article. I appreciate your help- ROWEN

As the sciatic nerve innervates the intrinsic muscles of the feet, the distance between the toes will be minimal in a fully injured sciatic nerve. There would also be the rat equivalent of a "foot drop". To measure the functional recovery in vivo, measurements of the toe spread can be obtained on a walking track. This method has been well described. As the nerve regenerates, the foot drop will resolve first followed by recovery of the intrinsic muscles, depending on the degree of the original nerve injury.

We used this looking at nerve conduits made of Vicryl or hollow siliastic tubes. Comparing the functional recovery to the histologic appearance might be interesting.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ress, MD

www.livplasticsurgery.com

 Greetings Dr Ress and thank you for your kind response. Yes indeed I fully agree with you, in fact we did this evaluation of toe spread exactly as you have described, as part of the functional assessment of sciatic nerve injury. Can you provide me with material information regarding the vicryl conduit and hollow siliastic that you mentioned? I certainly would like to use this as a benchmark or mention this product for comparing a novel scaffolding material we are investigating for our research. May I have your email please if possible then?  

Thank you sir and best regard

ROWEN T. YOLO, .MD, MHPEd

Associate Profesor of Pathology

Faculty of Medicine and Surgery

University of Santo Tomas

Manila. Philippines

sure it is andrew AT livplasticsurgery DOT com.

We referenced the work from Dr. A. Lee Dellon. I will look for the articles and other sources.

Thank you Dr Andrew Ress.