Figure 6.

Electrophysiologic parameters resulting from direct neural stimulation of the intact nerves and 8 weeks following autograft repair, neurograft repair, resection or repair with an empty tube. (a) Intact nerve thresholds were significantly lower at 0.1±0.06 mA than the autograft (0.56±0.2 mA, p<0.0006) or neurograft groups (0.55±0.18 mA, p<0.0009) (Figure 6a). There was no significant difference in threshold between the autograft and neurograft groups. The facial nerve could be stimulated in four of the rats with resected nerves 8 weeks after the resection albeit at higher threshold currents ranging from 0.4-0.7 mA; in two of the rats the nerves were electrically silent (circled). The empty tube group was electrically silent for all rats (circled). No significant difference between the intact, autograft and neurograft groups was found for the remaining parameters (Figure 6b-d). Each symbol represents an individual rat nerve (N=6 per group) and each square represents the group average with corresponding standard deviations marked.