Treatment of a Severed Nerve

April 24th, 2007

When you sustain trauma to your finger, hand, wrist, forearm or upper arm--from a knife, piece of glass, or whatever--numbness and or tingling--or even the feeling of suble loss of feeling---necessitate immediate assessment because a nerve may have been cut.

Severed--cut--nerves require surgical repair using microsurgical techniques. Initially--within 7 days of injury, end to end repair can be performed, but once retraction precludes primary repair, conduits can be used. Indeed, the biology of nerve repair has been leveraged with the use of commercially available tubes (conduits), which facilitate nerve recovery by guiding regrowth of the proximal end to the distal end. For many cases of cut nerves where a delay has resulted in stiffness and retraction of the nerve ends, end to end suturing is not possible, BUT nerve conduits will allow repair nonetheless. I will discuss these technical options with you.

Related Photos:

Trauma to this hand resulted in ulnar nerve laceration

Neurolysis/preparation of cut ends shows feasibility of primary repair

Primary repair has been performed

ULnar nerve laceration prior to repair with nerve tubes

Repair has been performed with conduits