Pelvic nerve injury negatively impacts female genital blood flow and induces vaginal fibrosis-implications for human nerve-sparing radical hysterectomy

This study sought to develop a novel animal model to study the impact of nerve-sparing radical hysterectomy (NSRH) on female genital blood flow.In vivo animal study.Thirty Sprague-Dawley female rats.Female rats underwent either unilateral pelvic nerve (PN) crush (PNC; n = 9), or crush of both the PNs and all efferent nerves in the pelvic plexus ('clock-nerve crush', CNC; n = 9). Under anaesthesia, we electrically stimulated the crushed PN at 3...