XXI.—Degenerative and Regenerative Changes at the Site of Trauma after Experimental Crush Injury of Peripheral Nerves

Abstract

The main interest in the healing of an injured nerve centres, naturally, on the regeneration of the axon. As the birthplace of the new fibres the central stump has attracted and received considerable attention, and the histology of the peripheral stump has been very fully investigated, particularly by Cajal (1928), and more recently by Young (1942), Weddell and Glees (1941), and Holmes and Young (1942). In contrast to our accurate knowledge of conditions in the central and peripheral stumps, there are scant records of the progress of repair at the injured region when the lesion results in the total destruction of the nerve fibres.In the course of experiments on rabbit sciatic nerves designed to test the effect of interference with the blood supply on the regeneration of injured nerve (Bacsich and Wyburn, 1945aand 1945b) total degeneration was accomplished by a severe crush with artery forceps. This gave us an opportunity to study the early histological changes in the crushed areas of these nerves.