There have been few reports on the outcome of nerve grafts for radial nerve injury with a large gap. Furthermore, the results of reports are variable. It was the purpose of this study to report our results of nerve grafting for high radial nerve injury with a defect of more than 9 cm.

Five patients with high radial nerve injury were treated by sural nerve autograft. The gap of radial nerve, measured in the operative field, was 9 cm in one patient, 10 cm in three, and 11 cm in one. There were four men and one woman of average age was 35 years. The causes of the injuries were, fracture of the humerus in three patients and surgery-related complications in two. Average delay from injury to operation was 8 months, and average duration of follow up after surgery was 49 months.

Overall motor recovery was M5 in two patients, M4 in two, and M2 in one.

Good motor recovery can be expected in patients with a large gap radial nerve gap, when sural nerve autografts are sutured to areas which have motor fascicles dominantly.