Morphology of nerve fibers regenerating through freeze‐thawed autogenous skeletal muscle grafts in rats

This paper describes the morphological appearances of long‐term nerve repair using freeze‐thawed, coaxially aligned autogenous skeletal muscle grafts in rats. The presence of minifascicles (compartmentation) within the muscle grafts confirms earlier reports of compartmentation whenever nerve regeneration occurs in a nonnerural environment. However, in contrast to the reports in the literature, there was no evidence of a loss of compartmentation at long intervals after nerve repair. It was found that a number of minifascicles became enclosed by a further proliferation of perineural cell to form distinct minifascicular groups. The term “midfascicle” is used to describe these larger perineural defined groups of minifascicles. The role of the perineurium is discussed.