Recovery of motor function is often poor following transection injuries to peripheral nerves. The purpose of this study was to measure and compare functional recovery of the sciatic nerve in the rat following transection and neurorrhaphy with the use of a nerve guide tube and with traditional end-to-end epineurial repair. Muscle recovery was also evaluated following a crush injury, a model of an axonotmetic lesion. Recovery was assessed at 8, 16, and 32 weeks after injury by measuring the isometric contractile properties of the soleus muscle and at 8 and 16 weeks by measuring the conduction properties of the sciatic nerve. The mean conduction velocity of the sciatic nerve in the crush group and both transection groups was significantly slower than that of controls at both 8 and 16 weeks. Following a transection injury, the soleus became a significantly faster muscle as measured by time to peak twitch tension. By 32 weeks, the maximum isometric tension of the soleus muscle recovered to 90% that of the control group following a crush injury and to less than 70% following a transection injury and repair. Recovery was better in the epineurial repair group than in the tube repair group at 8 weeks, but no difference was found between the groups at 16 or 32 weeks. These results demonstrate that nerve guide tubes are a potential alternative to epineurial repair. The poor motor recovery following repair of transection injuries may be related to poor specificity of reinnervation.

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This project was undertaken to compare the opinions of private and public dental school students' perceptions concerning extramural programming, which is defined as any aspect of the curriculum in which undergraduate dental students provide dental care outside the main dental facility. A survey instrument was used to collect data from undergraduate students at a private (N=267; 88.4 percent response rate) and at a public (N=213; 67.2 percent response rate) dental school. When asked to rate the value of various extramural sites in making them a better dentist, both groups rated private dental offices the most valuable and prisons the least valuable. When questioned about the amount of time students should spend each year in extramural programming, private students, overall, desired 34 percent more time than did public students. When asked what percentage of the total time spent in extramural programming students should spend providing various categories of dental care, public school students thought 26 percent more time should be spent rendering preventive services/health education than did the private students. The private students indicated a stronger desire (13 percent more) for rendering clinical services than did public students. Both private and public students were most likely to enter group private practice after graduation. The increasing interest in community-based programs makes the information gained from this study useful for future curriculum planning.

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