The present study was undertaken to compare blood flow between conventional nerve grafts and surgically revascularized grafts. Paired comparisons of blood flow data between a 10 cm segment of vascularized nerve graft and a 10 cm segment of conventional nerve graft in a canine model established that blood flow in the nonvascularized grafts was significantly greater (p less than 0.001) than that in the paired vascularized grafts. The rationale for difficult and time-consuming vascularized nerve grafting procedures may therefore not be warranted.