A Study of Sensory Recovery after Unilateral Digital Nerve Injury

Abstract

A well performed repair of a digital nerve may still lead to unsatisfactory results. The introduction of the operating microscope has improved the results a lot. Still, there are many factors which affect the result of a good repair, age of the patient, timing of the repair and type of injury. Healing in young patients under 10 years of age usually gives better results and most of them reach a normal or near normal sensation. Sharp injuries give better results than crush injuries. The sooner the repair, the better the results as shown by our study. Yet, some authors reached the conclusion that the timing of repair had no big effect on their results.

There are controversies about the possibility of leaving a unilateral injured digital nerve without repair, depending on the theory of crossover innervation. Some authors believe that crossover innervation from the adjacent intact nerve may totally substitute for the function of the injured nerve. Patients in this study were divided into two groups. Repair was performed in the first group and in the second group the injured nerve was left unrepaired. The results reyealed that an injured digital nerve must be repaired to reach a satisfactory