FIGURE 1.

Key surgical steps of SNT. First, the area of spinal cord injury is removed to produce two acutely transected spinal cord stumps (A,B). Then, based on the effective length of the defect between two fresh spinal stumps, a section of sural nerve harvested from the patient’s lower leg simultaneously, was divided into several bundles, maintaining the cranial and caudal orientation of all the bundles, and sutured side by side into one bundle (C). Finally, the sural nerve is autotransplanted to bridge the gap between the distal and proximal spinal cords. The sites of transection were topically applied with PEG to complete the SCF, and the two sites of transection are then anastomosed with suturing under the microscope (D).