Muscle transplant may be performed in a single-stage or in two stages. In the single-stage procedure the muscle remains longer without innervation. In two stages, the nerve grafting is performed before, so the denervation time is smaller. The purpose of this work was to compare these two methods using the end-to-side neurorrhaphy. The study was performed with 80 rats divided in four groups of 20 animals. The group 1 was the normality control. The group 2 was submitted to two stages surgical procedures. In the first stage a sural nerve graft was sutured end-to-side to the tibial nerve. In the second stage the fibular nerve was transected and the distal end was sutured end-to-end to the sural graft. The group 3 underwent to the same procedure of group 2, however in a single stage. The group 4 was the denervated control, where the fibular nerve was transected and both stumps were implanted into the subjacent muscles. The experiment lasted 29 weeks, when the animals were sacrificed. The right tibial cranial muscle and the nerves were harvested. The average mass of the tibial cranial muscle, in group 1 was 0,9180 g (+/- 0,1115), in group 2 was 0,6034 g (+/-0,0333), in group 3 was 0,4806 g (+/- 0,0659) and in group 4 was 0,2555 g (+/-0,0126) (p<0,001). The muscle fibers area average was 0,004634 mm˛ (+/-0,000758) for group 1, 0,002613 mm˛ (+/-0,000581) for group 2, 0,002102 mm˛ (+/-0,000674) for group 3 and 0,000433 mm˛ (+/-0,000486) for group 4 (p<0,0001). The minimum diameter of muscle fibers was 0,066012 mm (+/-0006347) for group 1, 0,044423 mm (+/-0,000768) for group 2, 0,038978 mm (+/-0,009114) for group 3 and 0,015295 mm (+/-0,008610) for group 4 (p<0,0001). It was concluded that the muscle reinnervation in two surgical stages was superior than in the one stage.
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