Introduction: The placement of a vascularized nervous graft is an option for acute nervous injuries treatment, as this has demonstrated a longer viability.
Objective: To carry out a macroscopic and microscopic analysis of the vascularity of the main lower limb nerves used as vascularized nervous grafts.
Materials and methods: It was followed out a descriptive, transversal and non-comparative study to analyse the saphenous, the sural, the deep peroneal and the superficial peroneal nerves vascularity. This study was performed in two stages: 1) an in situ vascularity study and 2) a morphometric study.
Results: By the in situ study, it was demonstrated the following: the total length of the lower limb nerves used as graft, was in a decrease order: sural nerve (micro = 29.26 cm, +/- 4.05 cm), superficial peroneal nerve (micro = 28.61 cm, +/- 3.97 cm), deep peroneal nerve (micro = 26.64 cm, +/- 5.21 cm) and saphenous nerve (micro = 25.12 cm, +/- 4.42 cm). The morphometric study demonstrated that the dominant artery with the major diameter belongs to the saphenous nerve, with a diameter of 1.13 mm; then we have the superficial peroneal nerve with a 1.01 mm diameter, followed by the deep peroneal nerve with 0.91 mm, and finally the sural nerve with the smallest diameter, 0.85 mm.
Conclusions: The saphenous nerve has the most appropriated morphological characteristics to be used as a vascularized graft; by the contrary the deep peroneal nerve represents the last option from all the nerves included in this study.