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How are nerve injuries treated these days? My 20-year-old nephew is being med evaced to the states from Iraq where he has been serving with Operation Desert Storm. All we know is that the major nerve(s)? to his hand have been severed by an explosive device.
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Treatment may depend on the type of injury, severity, and location as well as any other injuries that may be present.
In some cases, time and support are all that can be offered patients. In patients with transected nerves (cut all the way across) like your nephew, surgery to stitch the ends back together or graft nerve (or other) tissue between the two ends may be necessary.
Nerve transfers are another way to manage some major nerve injuries. A donor nerve taken from the same limb or another area is used to restore valuable function in the affected arm or leg. But nerves are very delicate and disturbing them to move them or surgically repair them has its own downfalls and complications. But patients are warned ahead of time that they may only get partial control back.
We definitely need a breakthrough in our understanding of nerves in order to find better ways to treat nerve injuries. If scientists can break the code of the molecular biology involved in nerve injury and repair, it might be possible to find alternate ways to help the regenerative healing process along.
The body does have a protein called nerve growth factor. There's just not enough of it to quickly or adequately repair a major nerve injury. So maybe there's some way to use stem cells to grow more growth factor and thus stimulate faster nerve re-growth.
Other researchers are looking for ways to deal with the atrophy that occurs when nerve tissue is off-line. They are taking a look at the space between the nerve and muscle called the myoneural junction.
This space is where all the biochemical action takes place. Electrical signals passing down the length of the nerve turn into chemical signals that cross the gap between nerve and muscle and instruct the muscle to contract.
With a nerve injury, no messages are being sent down the nerve. No chemical changes occur in the junction. The muscle remains quiet. Perhaps there's a way to artificially stabilize the neuromuscular junction and stimulate the muscle until the nerve can take over. This could possibly prevent the degeneration that occurs around the nerve cells and perhaps help prevent atrophy as the muscle waits for nerve signals to resume.
Military casualties with nerve injuries from explosive devices has brought this problem to the forefront. Every effort is being made to find ways to approach this problem from all sides.
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