The peripheral nervous system regulates wound healing during all its phases, i.e., inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. It has been reported that there is a significant reduction in the inflammatory response to tissue injury as well as slower wound healing in the absence of innervation. Although some studies suggest that neuropeptides released by functional nerves within and around the wound site play an important role during the wound healing process, there is little understanding of the underlying mechanisms. A better understanding would help devise strategies that enhance wound healing when working with free flaps, or when treating extremity injuries with or without neuropathies.
We hypothesize that the lack of innervation and associated neuropeptide stimuli down regulates the metabolic processes, such as energy production, protein and DNA synthesis, that are critical for wound healing. We propose to develop an animal model consisting of a tubed superficial epigastric flap where the epigastric branch of the femoral nerve to the flap can be severed at will. Furthermore, these flaps can be perfused ex vivo to obtain a detailed map of the metabolic rates throughout the tissue. Wounds will be created to the flaps and the metabolic response with or without a functional nerve will be compared.
truehttp://www.plasticsurgery.org:80/x2004.xmlCCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)text/html,application/xhtml+xml,text/xml;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
