Digital camera

During the experimental period, the macroscopic appearance of the wound and surrounding skin was recorded at the time of the dressing change using a digital camera (Sony Corp., Tokyo, Japan). Erythema on the periwound skin and necrotic tissue on the wound bed were observed. The wound areas were measured using the ImageJ software (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD) and the wound areas relative to that on PWD 1 were calculated.

The rats were fixed on a laboratory-made operating table after anesthesia. The affected limb was held firm with one tack in front of and one behind the elbow joint of the affected limb. An incision of the skin was made in the middle of the upper left arm of the rat to expose and then bluntly separate the nerve. In the sham operation group and epineurial neurorrhaphy group, the median nerves were directly stimulated. In the musculocutaneous nerve transposition, medial pectoral nerve transposition, and radial nerve muscular branch transposition groups, a site 5 mm from the sleeve suture was stimulated with a Synergy electrophysiologic apparatus (Medelec Synergy; Oxford Instrument Inc., United Kingdom) with 0.9 mA continuous square waves at 50 Hz. The position of each left front paw was recorded with a digital camera (Sony, Tokyo, Japan) before and after stimulation. Results were synthesized with Image Pro Plus 4.5 software (Media Cybernetics, Silver Spring, MD, USA), and the angle of wrist flexion was measured.