Retrograde tracing and toe spreading after experimental autologous nerve transplantation and crush injury of the sciatic nerve: a descriptive methodological study

In the present study we could indicate that there was no direct relationship between functional recovery (toe spreading) measured by SSI and the number of labelled (motor and sensory) neurons evaluated by retrograde tracing. The present findings demonstrate that a multimodal approach with a variety of independent evaluation tools is essential to understand and estimate the therapeutic benefit of a nerve repair strategy.