Table of Contents
Washington University Experience | PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY | 1 Normal PNS Anatomy (Sural) | 1A0 Introduction - Normal Sural Nerve
Normal Sural Nerve: In the great majority of peripheral nerve biopsies the sural nerve is the nerve of choice. The nerve has been biopsied for many years providing an extensive literature. Biopsy of the sural nerve offers a typical stereotyped anatomic location, is distally accessible (neuropathies are often distally accentuated), does not cause significant morbidity or the loss of critical and diffuse function, can easily be assessed electrophysiologically and is relatively unbranched over the sites typically biopsied. However, the sural nerve is a pure sensory nerve, supplying the skin over the lateral and posterior ankle and lateral foot and contains almost no motor or autonomic fibers. That said, routine H&E stained material provides important information concerning immune-mediated and infectious processes, vasculitis, neoplastic infiltration, and distinctive histologic findings (tomaculi, onion-bulbs) which will be illustrated in following subsections of this atlas.
