Over the past several years, in order to reduce the morbidity of ankle numbness due to harvesting of the sural nerve,

we have begun using an absorbable collagen tube, made by Integra, called the Neuragen™ Nerve Guide, instead of

autologously harvested sural nerve when performing nerve grafting.  By securing the proximal and distal cut ends of

the neurovascular bundle into the collage tube, complete capture of regrowing axons is more likely to occur than with

an autologous sural nerve graft, improving the chances of success.

Intraoperative photographs of a collagen tube nerve grafting procedure in progress and after completion are shown.

Last update: Sun Nov 6 17:22:17 2005