Peripheral Nerve Reconstruction after Injury: A Review of Clinical and Experimental Therapies

Unlike other tissues in the body, peripheral nerve regeneration is slow and usually incomplete. Less than half of patients who undergo nerve repair after injury regain good to excellent motor or sensory function and current surgical techniques are similar to those described by Sunderland more than 60 years ago. Our increasing knowledge about nerve physiology and regeneration far outweighs our surgical abilities to reconstruct damaged nerves and successfully regenerate motor and sensory function. It is technically possible to reconstruct nerves at the fascicular level but not at the level of individual axons. Recent surgical options including nerve transfers demonstrate promise in improving outcomes for proximal nerve injuries and experimental molecular and bioengineering strategies are being developed to overcome biological roadblocks limiting patient recovery.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  BioMed Research International

• Publication date

  2014-09-03

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1155/2014/698256PMID 25276813PMCID 4167952
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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