Surgeons ‘rewire’ paralysed man’s nerves to give back use of hand

A surgeon operates on a broken hand in 2009

Paralysis has long since been regarded as incurable with nerve damage, particularly that of the spinal column being irreversible. Of course paralysis itself has unfortunately come to be a reality for many who have suffered debilitating accidents or diseases with modern medicine still trying to cope.

But there may be signs of life in this regard as today it was announced that a new pioneering surgery conducted by surgeons in the US, may just be able to reverse atleast some of the effects of paralysis.

In a landmark surgery conducted by surgeons from the Washington University School of Medicine, surgeons have restored partial use a hand to a previously paralysed man. The patient, a 71-year-old man, had suffered paralysis following a car accident, losing the use of his legs, while retaining only limited use of his hands, being unable to pinch or grip. But with this new revolutionary surgery, surgeons have managed to ‘rewire’ the patient’s nerves; helping to reconnect them and giving him back limited control of his hands.

The details of the operation were published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, and it details that the patient while not suffering any nerve damage in the arm, had lost the ‘connection’ between the nerves in his arm and hand and the brain. What the Washington University surgeons were able to do was reconnect the nerves of the patient’s hand, the anterior interosseous nerve, with that of the nerves in the muscle of the upper arm, thus creating a new route for which signals from the brain could travel. Assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Washington University, Ida Fox explained the surgery to the BBC saying, "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."

But Dr. Fox cautioned that while this was a “really novel” technique it did not mean that the patient would regain full use of his hand, saying "That isn't going to happen."

Of course while the surgery itself may have reconnected the hands to the brain, doctors have said that the patient had to undergo physiotherapy, particularly because in this new ‘arrangement’ nerves that were once connected to the elbow now have to operate the hand and this poses a challenge. Eight months after the surgery, the patient was able his thumb index and middle fingers and now is bale to feed himself as well as perform “rudimentary writing.”

The surgeons also mentioned that the technique developed would only work in certain type of paralysed patients, particularly those who had sustained injuries higher on the vertebral column such as the patient in this case who suffered a neck injury.