Paralyzed man helped by nerve rewiring procedure regains hand function
A 71 unlucky man that was in a car accident and lost both use of his hand in 2008, seems to have gotten lucky!
Indeed, at the Washington University, reconstructive Surgeons are now experimenting rewiring of the nerves.
All began in 2008 when the man got his spinal cord (at the C7 vertebrae, base of his neck) crushed, resulting in the cut of the nerves circuit normally sending messages from the brain to the hands muscles. What follow is the loss of his hands functions.
Now, guess what? The patient can grasp object and more, thanks to some tricky nerves rewiring. He now has limited arm, elbow and shoulder movement.
Ida K. Fox, the Surgeon told BBC “The circuit [in the hand] is intact, but no longer connected to the brain. What we do is take that circuit and restore the connection to the brain.”
She also said in a statement: “This procedure is unusual for treating quadriplegia because we do not attempt to go back into the spinal cord where the injury is. Instead, we go out to where we know things work — in this case the elbow — so that we can borrow nerves there and reroute them to give hand function.”
What actually helped the surgery is that the nearby nerves were not injured by the accident, which make possible to connect them to the actual damaged nerve and achieve the result in this man. Of course nerve reconstruction should be available in the future (thank you stem cells), but for now let’s admit that this achievement is quite impressive and can give some hope to many people.
Source: Medical Daily
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