Muscle-sparing approach to the peroneal nerve of the rabbit.

To study nerve degeneration and regeneration the peroneal nerve of the rabbit is a rewarding experimental model. The access to the nerve should be as atraumatic as possible and no muscular tissue should be incised or transected in order to lower postoperative morbidity and enhance the welfare of the animals. Given such conditions it is not possible to expose the undistributed proximal and central parts of the peroneal nerve from the intervertebral notch to its passage through the lateral head of the gastrocnemius muscle by a single approach, but rather a two-level incision is required. Such an approach to the peroneal nerve was carried out on 24 New Zealand White rabbits. The amount of postoperative pain was estimated by the rabbits social and feeding behaviour. The observed overall impairment was impressively low. This approach has been shown to be beneficial for the animals, and is atraumatic and should be strongly recommended.