Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
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Reg Anesth Pain Med · Jul 2018
Microanatomical Nerve Architecture of 6 Mammalian Species: Is Trans-Species Translational Anatomic Extrapolation Valid?
Various animal models have historically been used to study iatrogenic nerve injury during performance of conduction nerve blocks. Our aims were to compare the microstructures of nerves in commonly used species to those of humans and to explore the validity of the extrapolating these findings to humans. ⋯ Although some of the metrics could reasonably be expected to differ because of the size of the species-for example, nerve cross-sectional area-there was little microanatomical similarity between the sciatic nerves of humans and those of the nonprimate mammalian species studied. This may question the validity of some conclusions reached over the years by direct translation from these species to humans. Further studies on nerve function, intraneural injection, and microanatomy of nonhuman primate species are warranted.